Muratec America acquired by Konica Minolta
– Konica Minolta Business Solutions U.S.A., Inc. acquired Muratec America, Inc.on Aug. 1, 2017. Muratec is now a wholly owned Konica Minolta subsidiary, but we will retain our name and independence as a Konica Minolta division. We are now known as “Muratec, a Konica Minolta Company.”
o There will be no change in Muratec’s operations, and it will be business as usual. An important aspect of the acquisition was for Muratec to retain all employees. Our highly tenured team with in-depth knowledge of the dealer channel will continue to support you. This acquisition should be completely transparent to our dealer communities.
– The decision of our former parent, Murata Machinery Limited (MML), to sell their North American office equipment division was largely due to their limited development and manufacturing capabilities.
o Muratec will continue to sell MML manufactured A4 monochrome products and A3 color MFP products for the foreseeable future.
– Muratec will continue to provide the industry’s best service and support. This acquisition will eventually provide Muratec dealer partners additional products and services.
– Konica Minolta will invest in Muratec, specifically to enhance adjacency product sales,
including digital label presses. Konica Minolta and Muratec will work together to provide the channel the best products, services and support.
Toshiba financial issues update
– The Register magazine published article entitled; “Creditors, shareholders urge Toshiba to consider bankruptcy”
o “big banks and shareholders are urging Toshiba to consider bankruptcy as a way of getting out of the problematic recapitalization strategy”
– According to IPVM magazine, Toshiba is shutting down its “Security Division” including their video surveillance product offering.
– Toshiba agreed to give Western Digital a 2 week notice before closing any sale of the NAND memory chip manufacturing division o This gives the US firm the opportunity to come back to court or arbitration panel to argue for chance to stop the deal
– According to The Business Times, Toshiba announced that Western Digital has no rights to its new chip production designs and plant. o Toshiba said it will build the plant without any participation from its US partner, thereby cutting off Western Digital from new technology.
– The Tokyo Stock Exchange announced it has demoted Toshiba to the 2nd section after the company’s liabilities exceeded its assets in the fiscal year ended in March o It company does not overcome its negative balance sheet, it will be completely delisted from stock exchange. Deadline for submitting audited financials is now 8/10/17
– NHK News of Japan is reporting that Toshiba is likely to once again miss the deadline for submitting its earnings for 2016 owing to a disagreement between its auditors o Toshiba’s previous auditor, Ernst & Young, had said in its report that the conglomerate registered multi-million dollar losses in its nuclear energy subsidiary during the 2016 fiscal year.
o However, PwC Aarata, the new auditors say Toshiba executives must have been aware of the losses in 2015 and asked the company to review its earnings,
which would delay the process of approval and hence the release of the results, which have been pushed back thrice already.
o In June, Toshiba had revised its net loss for the 2016 financial year to 995.2 billion yen ($8.95 billion) and also predicted a negative shareholder’s equity of 581.6 billion yen.
– The European Court of Justice dismissed an appeal brought by Toshiba regarding its participation in the gas-insulated switchgear (GIS) cartel, upholding the court’s judgment making the fine imposed on Toshiba final o the Commission imposed fines amounting to 750 million euros on 20 European and Japanese companies, including 64 million euro fine on Toshiba also dismissed Toshiba’s arguments with regard to the calculation of the fine.
Ricoh updates solution
– Announced “significant enhancements” to its Streamline NX solution (most likely a relabeled solution from ABBYY)
– Improved automation for scanning and indexing
– Includes OCR (optical character recognition)
– Print directly from mobile device
– Release print jobs at MFP with authentication
– Customizable workflows
– Supports up to 100,000 devices on core server
– Can add up to 250 additional servers
– Generates usage reports
– Automatically redirects print jobs for offline devices to similarly capable alternative devices
– Enforce print policies
– Set budget limits
Ricoh wins production print contract
– Heidelberg, which relabels Ricoh production color laser systems, announced following placements:
Award from Rocco Press of Paterson, New Jersey
o Installed the Versafire CV production color laser system
(relabeled version of the Ricoh Pro C7110X) used to produce cut
sheets, booklets and catalogs.
Award from Valley Printing of Ceres, California
o installed the Versafire CV production color laser system will be used to produce sheetfed cut and stack labels
Fujifilm wins production print contracts
– Award from La Trama Digital Print, a commercial printer in Spain
Installed a Fujifilm Jet Press 720S production color inkjet system
– Award from MSP (mailing services/printing), a commercial printer in Pittsburgh, PA
Installed a Fujifilm Truepress Jet 520ZZ production color inkjet system
Reasons given to choose:
o Top speed of 722 feet per minute
o Single pass multiple inkjet print head array
o Will be used to produce high volume variable data direct mail pieces
Fujifilm published study on MPS
– Fujifilm (maker of most product with Xerox name) conducted study that revealed that printing cost accounts for average of 4% of total company’s annual revenues
– “Businesses don’t pay much attention to printing costs. They don’t know that it can actually affect their bottom line,” said Bebi Guzman, marketing manager
A typical office worker prints about 34 pages per day
This is equivalent to about 7,480 pages per year given the usual 22 working days in a single month
– “Many businesses are not aware that they are incurring costs because of the inefficient consumables”
– “This can be easily prevented by using printing hardware that maximize printing possibilities, that help you print more, at lower cost.”
Epson exec gives pitch for inkjet over laser
– Channelnomics published interview with Larry Trevarthen, Director at Epson
– “Fundamentally, the cost structure of inkjet is lower than the cost structure of laser – at a comparable level”
– “You are able to deliver solutions at lower cost with an inkjet platform than you are with a laser platform”
– “Then you have less serviceability, lower environmental concerns et cetera”
– “Long-term, inkjet will have a lot more headroom”
– “sees the technology as ticket into more enterprise-size clients and new verticals, such as medical and legal”
– “Laser’s not going away…but you will see more growth coming from inkjet”
– “The channel now understands more and more that they need a blended strategy – they need ink and laser”
Xerox suffers another sales decline
– Reported its quarterly earnings
– Revenue fell from $2.79 billion to $2.57 billion
North American revenue down 7.3% to $1.53 billion
– Profit rose from $158 million to $166 million
–
Equipment sales dropped 16% to $546 million
Entry-level installations:
o 24% increase color MFPs
o 10% increase b/w MFPs
Mid-range installations:
o 15% decrease color MFPs
o 14% decrease b/w MFPs
o High-end installations (production print):
o 9% decrease color systems
o 34% decrease in b/w systems
– Post sale revenue (service, supplies, etc.) down 5.7% to $2.02 billion
– Contract renewal rate of 86%
Xerox launches new scanners
– Xerox introduced the DocuMate 6460 and 6480 desktop scanners
– Made by Visioneer
– Max duty cycle of up to 10,000 double-sided pages daily
– accept up to 120 mixed-size documents – including dot matrix paper – into their document feeders
– 300dpi resolution color
– Top scan speed of 130opm for the 6460 and 170opm for the 6480
– Scans both sides of original at same time
– Active Reversing Rollers
– advanced algorithms to correct and improve the visual clarity of scanned documents or images containing imperfections
– includes Nuance Power PDF, PaperPort & OmniPage Ultimate OCR
– base MSRPs of $1095 & $1595 respectively
Xerox wins production print contract
– Award from Pekin Insurance of Pekin, Illinois
– installed a Brenva HD production color inkjet press
– will be used to produce policy and billing statements
Xerox bilked out of $25 million
– The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office filed federal charges against several men in Florida who participated in scheme to defraud Xerox out of $25 million worth of MFP/printer supplies
– Charged were David Haynes and his sons Jason Haynes and Kyle Haynes, along with Bryan Day and Robert Lee Fisher
– Federal investigators said the Hayneses, who have five Volusia County furniture stores, conspired to launder money by engaging in monetary transactions knowing the money was derived from merchandise that was criminally obtained
– Robert Lee Fisher (former owner of RBM Business Systems of Florida) is accused of fraudulently reselling consumables for copiers, mostly toner cartridges, that he obtained by falsifying the number of copies made
– Investigators said Xerox Corp. lost $25 million in the scheme and that those accused made more than $9 million by selling the consumables, mostly to a Miami buyer, according to the federal complaint filed July 24.
Oval Partners buys another copier dealer
– The San Francisco, CA based investment firm announced it has acquired Action Imaging Group of Tucson, AZ, which is a dealer for Ricoh, Kyocera, Samsung and HP
– Oval also owns Flexprint, Laser Options and ProCopy, all dealers in Phoenix, AZ
Okidata reports its last quarter earnings
– Okidata total sales went down 2.8% to $0.82 billion
– reported a loss for its first quarter of 54.74 billion yen
– “its business performance turned out approximately as planned”
– sales of office printers/MFPs went down 2.6% to 24.9 billion yen
Durst launches new production print system
– Durst announced new high speed, 8-color inkjet label press Tau 330 RSC inline
– a UV inkjet label and package printing press
– 330 mm (13 in.) print width
– print speed of up to 78 linear meters/min (245 ft./min)
– 1200 x 1200 dpi
– production capacity of 1.485 m• per hour
– 8 color stations (CMYK+W+OVG)
– high pigmented inks
– close to 98% Pantone color gamut coverage.
Laser unit placements down in Europe
– CONTEXT Research of England reports that sales of laser printers across Western Europe declined 5% in Q2
– Sales fell in all categories except for laser MFPs, up 1%
– By contrast, sales of laser print only devices were down 11%
– The average selling price of b/w laser printers fell by 3%
o Average selling price of color laser printers down 8%
o b/w units with print speed of 22ppm or higher up 10%
o color units with print of 22ppm of higher up 11%
– HP Inc. = 41% marketshare (printers and MFPs combined)
– Brother = 18% marketshare, up 12%
HP launches new cash registers
– HP Inc. announced new products for the point-of-sale (POS) market for the retail industry
– Will be competing directly with similar products offered by Toshiba (which got into the market by buying the POS division from IBM)
– The new HP ElitePOS is a modular design
– Optional integration with interactive signage, employee-attendance, and self-service applications
– The LCD display can be separated from the input/output (I/O) base for placement versatility
– optional HP or Epson receipt printer
– optional magnetic stripe reader built into the display
– optional barcode scanner
– HP states its differentiation in this category is that its products are more secure with Sure Start Gen3
o According to Verizon, 64 percent of breaches in the retail industry that contained data loss were caused by point-of-sale intrusions
HP wins production print contract
– Award from Consolidated Label Co. of Sanford, Florida
– installed an HP Indigo 8000 production color digital press
– will be used to produce custom labels
– Reasons for choosing include:
– Top speed of 262 feet per minute
– Up to 7 color ink stations
– color gamut that reaches up to 97% of Pantone colors
Kyocera buys largest Hyland dealer
– Kyocera (aka Kyoto Ceramic Company of Japan) announced the acquisition of DataBank IMX
– DataBank is the single largest North American reseller of Hyland OnBase ECM (enterprise content management) solutions
– Is planning on the expansion of custom services and advanced document workflow scanning and printing solutions
– Databank claims the following as customers: o Verizon
o MIT
o Kansas City Life Insurance
o UMASS
o Honda
– “Coming together with Kyocera is a tremendous opportunity for our existing and prospective customers,” said Chuck Bauer, CEO at DataBank
o “The acquisition will enable us to offer innovative new solutions and services tailored to rapidly changing market needs.”
– “DataBank has already proven to be an outstanding partner,” explained Yukio Ikeda, president and CEO of Kyocera
o “We’ve confirmed that not only are we truly complementary partners on a product and service level, but also that we share the same passion and commitment to our customers. As a combined entity, we can accelerate our own growth as we collaborate on developing new ways to help our customers thrive.”
– Databank is headquartered in King of Prussia, PA, and has following branch locations:
o Chesterton, IN
o Chicago, IL
o Lincoln, NE
o Minnetonka, MN
o Sioux Falls, SD
o Huntingdon Valley, PA
o Canton, MA
o Carrollton, TX
o Monroe, LA
o Orlando, FL
o Phoenix, AZ
Foxconn states earnings for its Sharp div.
– Foxconn, aka Hon Hai Precision of Taiwan, published quarterly financials for its Sharp division
– Total sales (includes all divisions) up 19.6% to $4.5 billion
– Total operating profit of $154 million
–
MFP/printer division revenue down 6.9% to $650 million
Foxconn buys copier dealer
– has acquired Midshire Business Systems and Midshire Business Systems (Northern), together known as Midshire, both in England
– The Birmingham, Stockport and Cardiff, England based office- technology reseller will be operated as part of Sharp Business Systems UK
– Midshire also sells managed IT Services & visual solutions
– will operate for now under its own brand name, and existing management and reporting structures will remain in place
– Phil Powell, Managing Director, Midshire Business Systems, said: “We are keen to expand what we do as a business and this deal provides us with the support of an international manufacturer and with it the long term investment and expertise to benefit our clients.”
– (In January, 2018, Sharp will hold Inspire 2018 a conference for its European dealers)
ABBYY names new leadership
– ABBYY Software of Russia is one of the few owners of OCR (optical character recognition) patents and provider of document capture solutions
– Andrey Isaev was named new Chief Product Office
– Bodo Wagener was named new Chief Sales Officer
– Jupp Stoepetie was named new Chief Marketing Officer
– Bruce Orcutt was named new Senior VP of Product Marketing
– All report to CEO, Ulf Persson
Ephesoft gets funding for growth
– Ephesoft of XXXX, is a provider of high speed document capture solutions
– CEO, Don Field announced that he obtained $15 million of investment from Mercato Partners of Salt Lake City, Utah
– Has already received funding from Fujitsu and In-Q-Tel
– New funding allowed launch of new SaaS (solution as a service) cloud-based version of its Transact capture solution, which is hosted on Microsoft’s Azure platform
Large dealer acquired
– NovaCopy, headquartered in Nashville, TN announced it has been acquired by its current senior management team with equity financing provided by Trivest Partners, LP, a private investment firm
– Novacopy was founded in 1999 and now has 11 locations with revenues of $80 million in 2016
– has acquired three companies in the past eight months with seven potential acquisitions, in various stages, currently underway
– “We have been approached by many potential acquirers in recent years due to our exceptional growth and stellar reputation,” said Darren Metz, CEO and founder. o “While we turned down those inquiries, two NovaCopy partners, Carolyn Stafford and Alex Brandon, were seeking a liquidity event and retirement while my partner Joe White and I both wanted to continue owning and managing the company. All four owners had a common goal of keeping our management team intact so that we could continue our traditions of excellent customer and employee relations without disruption from new owners or investors. Selling to our management team was a great idea, but we could not make the numbers work until Trivest put together a creative solution that achieved all of our goals.”
– As part of the recapitalization, NovaCopy provided cash bonuses to long-term employees, which was used by the current NovaCopy senior management team along with equity from Trivest to buy the business from the selling shareholders. o As a result, NovaCopy founders Alex Brandon and Carolyn Stafford have retired, while Joe White and Darren Metz participated with 18 other NovaCopy managers in buying the company
o Going forward, Metz will remain CEO and the largest individual shareholder along with Joe White, who will continue as President and second largest individual shareholder.
Staples merger with Office Depot back on?
– The merger between Staples and Office Depot may happen after all, at least according to a report from the New York Post
– Supposedly Staples has been in talks to spin off its 1,500 retail stores to Office Depot
– Staples was recently acquired by Sycamore Partners for $6.9 billion
– The merger was originally scuttled after it was contested by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission
– Sycamore apparently has signaled a willingness to offload the stores
o Stores have been losing business to Amazon.com
o Amazon reported that its office-supplies business has served 1 million business customers since its launch two years ago, and that it has grown 150 percent over the past year
Samsung corruption case update
– Jay Y. Lee, vice chairman of Samsung Electronics Co., rejected allegations that he paid bribes to a friend of South Korea’s former president to secure support for a key merger.
– The billionaire heir to South Korea’s biggest company has been in detention since February
– Prosecutors have zeroed in on meetings between Lee and the former South Korean leader, alleging they colluded to get a state-backed pension fund to support a merger of Samsung affiliates in return for financial favors.
– Among the allegations is that Samsung provided an $800,000 horse and financial support for the daughter of Park confidante Choi Soon-sil at the former president’s behest.
– Lee has been the de facto leader of Samsung since 2014, when his father was hospitalized after a heart attack
Ricoh financial issues update
– Announced that it is now laying off employees in country of Australia
o Total of 70 people let go, according to CRN magazine
o Also reduced the number of dealers from 96 to 72
o Executives who are gone include Nick Mills, David Berryman and Joe Ciliberto
o Has hired former Fujifilm executive, Andy Berry to be in charge of the division
o Also apparently is getting rid of the Lanier brand in the country to cut costs
– Reported earnings for Q1 of 2017
o Profit increased 126.3% to 10.7 billion yen
o Total sales up 1% to 492.5 billion yen
o MFP/printer division revenue down 3.9% to 284.6 billion yen
§ MFP sales down 4.8%
§ Commercial printing sales up 5.1% to 45.6 billion yen
o Total debt of 877 billion yen, up 17.3%
o Spending on R&D decreased to 5.6% of revenue
o Has laid off a total of 2,400 employees or 2.3% of total
– Ricoh published a press release entitled;
“Impact of ‘WannaCry’ ransomware on Ricoh products”
to “continue the safe operation of some Ricoh Multifunction Printers, Laser Printers, Production Printers and Printer Controller products….”
Ricoh wins production print contract
– Award from A Control P, a commercial printer in Pune, India
– Installed a Pro C9100 production color laser system
– Reasons given for choosing included:
o 110ppm top speed
o Supports up to 400gsm in duplex
o Ability to print on PVC, textures and stickers
Fuji wins production print contract
– Award from Route One Print of Roterdam, England
– Installed a Fujifilm Jet Press 720S production color inkjet system
– Used to produce high quality business cards
Sharp’s parent to launch new TV brand
– Hon Hai Precision of Taiwan (aka Foxconn), owner of Sharp, announced it intends to launch a high-end television brand in the U.S.
– (the Sharp TV brand was sold to Hisense of China when it became unprofitable)
– Has applied for a trademark for the new undisclosed brand name
– Hope to sell 10 million units by end of 2018
– Will have 8K resolution in some models
– Foxconn also announced it is considering spending $10 billion to open a LCD panel manufacturing plant in southern Wisconsin, which could employ up to 13,000 people
Fujifilm financial issues update
– Announced that it has voluntarily suspended competing for government contracts in New Zealand
o Previously had shared government contracts with Canon, Ricoh and Konica Minolta
o “The New Zealand Ministry is concerned to ensure companies who supply the government are held to the high standards the public would expect”
– Officials are waiting for results of report on accounting scandal
o Fujifilm estimated the losses at $285 million
Printing Industries of America (PIA) awards
– Announced the annual 2017 InterTech Technology Awards for production print technologies. Products awarded include:
HP PageWide Web Press T490HD production color inkjet system
– Komori Impremia IS29 (relabeled version of the Konica Minolta KM-1)
– MGI AIS SmartScanner Intelligent Registration System
– Scodix Ultra Pro (coating system) with Foil digital enhancement
– Screen Truepress Jet 520HD continuous feed inkjet press
– AMS LED UV coating system
Xerox wins production print contracts
– Award from Rotary Printers of Midlands, South Africa
o Installed a Versant 180 production color laser system
o Also included a Matrix MX-530DP digital laminator and foiler
o Used to produce heavier duplex business cards and wedding invitations
o Reasons given for choosing include:
§ Top speed of 80ppm
§ Able to handle up to 350gsm
§ Inline spectrophotometer for color control automation
– Award from Willsons Group Services of Newark, Nottinghamshire, England
o Installed an iGen5 production color laser system
o “The iGen5 was the most competitive machine and we felt we needed to move before currency made things considerably more expensive?
o Reasons to choose include:
§ 2400dpi
§ Handles up to 350gsm
§ Optional 5th toner (orange, blue or green)
Xerox’s former CEO gets job
– Ursula Burns, the former Xerox CEO, was hired by VEON as chairwoman
– VEON (fka VimpelCom), is a global provider of telecommunications services, incorporated in Bermuda and headquartered in Amsterdam
– Ms. Burns presided over the mistaken acquisition of ACS by Xerox, in its failed attempt to get in managed IT services business (this division was sold off and is now named Convergent)
– (she was also planning on being part of Hillary Clinton’s cabinet)
Xerox launches new MPS certification
– Has established special recognition for its dealers for managed print services
– The MPS Accreditation Program provides:
o Custom training
o Sales and assessment tools
o Pricing considerations
o Marketing support
– “Master Elite” is the highest level of achievement
Production printer market growing
– Research published by HTF Market Intelligence
– Claims total market will grown 1.81% CAGR from 2016 to 2020
Former Lexmark staff to lose jobs
– The software division of Lexmark, which was acquired by Ninestar of China, and then sold off to Thoma Bravo, is laying off workers to cut costs
– Announced that an undisclosed number of workers lost their jobs last week in Lenexa, Kansas (fka headquarters of Perception Software, which Lexmark had acquired)
– Before layoffs, there were up to 700 employees at the facility
Ninestar’s Lexmark hit with lawsuits
– Several law firms have filed lawsuits representing former shareholders, alleging possible violations of federal securities laws
– Claiming company misled investors about value of the business
– Under the federal Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a misleading or fraudulent financial report can result in a penalty of $5 million
– Law firms filing include:
o Glancy Prongay & Murray
o Bronstein, Gewirtz & Grossman
o Kahn Swick & Foti
o Lundin Law PC
o Labaton Sucharow
Epson ships new high speed scanner
– Launched the DS-410 desk scanner
– Base MSRP of $379
– Document feeder holds up to 50 originals
– Scans both sides at same time
– Top speed of 26opm or 52ipm
– Comes with ISIS and TWAIN drivers
– Double feed detection
– Max duty cycle of 3000 sheets per day
– Comes with OCR software
– Can handle rigid ID cards and stacks of business cards
Epson partners with Nuance
– Announced it will resell Nuance eCopy, OmniPage COR, Power PDF and Equitrac
– Will be solution options for its new A3 color inkjet MFPs, like the WF-C205090
Epson reports its earnings
– For Q1 of 2017, total revenue of printer/MFP division was up 71.9% to 22.1 billion yen
– Reason given for increase was sales of high capacity ink tank printers and MFPs as well as large format color inkjet printers
– Dot matrix printer sales declined
Kodak Alaris ships new high speed scanner
– Launched the new i3300 desktop scanner
– Base MSRP of $4495
– Top speed of 70opm
– Scans both sides of original at same time
– Perfect Page software includes barcode reading
– Intelligent Document Protection features defends against potentially damaged documents
o Paper transport automatically stops at first indication of document damage
– TWAIN, ISIS drivers
– Auto deskew, autocrop, relative cropping, aggressive cropping, color dropout, interactive color, brightness/contrast adjustment, auto orientation, background color smoothing, sharpness filter, auto photo cropping
Kodak wins production print contract
– Award from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, for its CRD
– Installed a Kodak NexPress ZX3300 production color LED system
– Included the long sheet feeder, allowing sheets up to 14”x39”
– Replaced an HP Indigo 5500
HP wins production print contract
– Award from Bloomberg Ink Print Services of Dayton, NJ
– Installed an HP Indigo 7600 production color system
Kyocera reports its earnings
– For Q1 of 2017, total sales up 7.9% to 345,162 million yen
– Profit up 154% to 31,167 million yen
Study shows millennials like direct mail
– Research published by Quad/Graphics Corp.
– 71% = more likely to scan their mail
– 54% = less likely to discard without reading it
– 45% = more likely to organize and sort their mail
– 36% = more likely to take time to read their mail
– 24% = more likely to show their mail to others
– 57% = have made purchases based on direct mail offers
3D printing market in healthcare vertical
– Report published by Market Data Forecast
– Global healthcare market is projected to spend $915 million by 2021 on 3D printers
– Growth of CAGR 21.41% from 2016 to 2021
