June 13, 2016
Sharp’s new ownership
– Seeking Alpha publishes article written by analyst, David Deuchar, about challenges that Hon Hai Precision of Taiwan (aka Foxconn) has with new acquisition
– “significant problems left behind from previous management”
– “severe load of junk-grade debt”
– “hemorrhaging business segments, i.e. operating expenditure exceeds revenue”
– “difficulties of running a Nikkei 225 company from across the Sea of Japan”
– “it is a monumental task for Foxconn’s management if the company truly wants to see Sharp succeed as Terry Gou has said”
– Alberto Moel, analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein Co. stated; “He’s (Terry Gou, CEO of Foxconn) buying a giant house that has some issues with plumbing and shingles and mold and he’s going to clean all that up in a different language with a bunch of people in the house that don’t want to move”
Xerox to launch new inkjet press
– Joint development with KBA (Koenig & Bauer AG of Germany, maker of offset presses)
– At DRUPA show, Xerox will show the new VariJET 106 Folding Carton Press
– Based on the KBA Rapida press
– Handles up to B1 sheet size (39.37 x 29.83 inches)
– Uses technology from Impika of France, which Xerox acquired
– Inkjet printhead bar is one meter long, and has up to 7 colors of aqueous ink
– Top speed of 4500 sheets per hour
– Price and ship date not announced
Xerox wins production print contracts
– Award from Integrity Print of England o Installed a Nuvera 144 production b/w system and Versant 2100 production color system
o Will be used to produce variable data direct mail
– Award from Royal Offset of New Delhi, India o Installed a Versant 2100 production color system and included a Duple DC646 cutter/slitter/creaser machine
o Will be used to produce visiting cards
– AlphaGraphics announced that its 275 commercial print shops will now use Xerox XMPie for its web-to-print solutions
Xerox provides more details on quarter 1
– Total revenue down 4% to $4.3 billion
– Gross margin of 30.3%
– Operating margin down to 7.2%
– Net income down 85% to $36 million
– Document Technology division (printers, MFPs, etc.) total revenue down 10.4% to $1.64 billion o Equipment sales down 14%
o A4 b/w MFPs down 16%
o A4 color MFPs dup 1%
o Midrange A3 b/w MFPs down 14%
o Midrange A3 color MFPs up 1%
o Production color units up 56%
o Production b/w units down 8%
o Margin fell from 12.7% to 10.2%
RISO to launch new inkjet systems
– Based on engines supplied by Olympus of Japan
– ComColor GD9630 ProJet offers 160ppm cut sheet top speed o Uses EFI Fiery ComColorExpress FS2000C print controller
– ComColor FW5230 BizJet offers cut sheet top speed of 120ppm
– RISO T1 is color inkjet roll-fed duplex system with 20” wide web and top speed of 140 feet per minute
– RISO T2 is color inkjet cut sheet system (uses two engines) to produce 150 duplex A4 pages per minute
– All are aqueous ink based
– Pricing not announced
Canon wins production print contract
– Award from Impact, a commercial printer in Minneapolis, MN
– Installed an Oce’ VarioPrint i300 (cutsheet) and ColorStream 3900Z (continuous feed) production color inkjet systems
– Included 5 day Applied Inkjet Color training class
Ricoh wins production print contracts
– Award from Pondres, a commercial printer in The Netherlands o Installed a Pro VC60000 continuous feed color inkjet system
o Will be used to produce variable data marketing communication materials
o Also installed a Pro C9110 production color toner system and Pro 8120 production b/w system
– Award from Sun Productions, a commercial printer in the island nation of Vanuatu o Installed a Pro C7100X production color system
Hewlett Packard Enterprise spins off unit
– The company announced it is spinning off its IT services division (which became part of HP when it purchased EDS), and merging it with the enterprise services business of CSC (Computer Sciences Corp)
– New company will have $26 million in revenue with 5,000 customers in 70 countries
– Current head of CSC, Mike Lawrie, will be CEO of new company
– HPE will now have $33 billion in annual revenue after spin off o Will now focus on sales of servers, storage, networking, converged infrastructure, Helion cloud and software
HP Inc. reports its quarterly earnings
– PC division revenue down 10% to $7 billion o Job cuts allows operating profits to rise to $242 million
– Printer/MFP division revenue down 16% to $4.6 billion o Operating profit down from $982 million to $801 million
o Printer/MFP unit sales down 16% § Commercial printer units down 12%
o Supplies revenue down 16%
– Will let go of 3,000 people this fiscal year to reduce costs
Dell launches three new printers
– The S5840cdn desktop A4 color laser printer has base MSRP of $999 with top speed of 50ppm
– The S2830dn desktop A4 b/w laser printer has top speed of $40ppm for $279
– The S5830dn desktop A4 b/w laser printer has top speed of 63ppm for $999
– Yield and cost per page of toner cartridges not published
YSoft releases details of its solution sales
– Headquartered in the Czech Republic, and maker of cost recovery software (competes with Equitrac, Pharos, Papercut, etc.)
– Its YSoft SafeQ software is sold by Xerox and called Xerox Secure Print Manager Suite
– Claims it has 14,000 customers using SafeQ o 23% of Fortune Global 500 are customers
o 15% of sales are in North America
– Can also be used with 3D printers
Sepialine launches new software
– Now shipping PrinterPoint, designed to track and monitor wide format printers
– Provides real time meter reads, supply levels and status messages
– Allows wide format equipment dealers to bill customers for usage, ship supplies an schedule service calls
– Claims to work with machines from HP, Canon, Ricoh, Oce’ and KIP
– Cost of $5 per machine per month (cloud-based)
Sharp now shipping robot cell phone
– Launched the RoBoHoN for $1999 MSRP
– A humanoid robot phone with artificial intelligence
– Hopes to sell 5,000 per month
– Is 19.5cm tall and weighs 390 grams
– Device can walk and dance
– Controlled via voice command
Microsoft to cut more jobs
– Will take a $950 million charge and cut what little remains of its $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia’s cell phone business
– Will cut 1,850 employees in this division
Nuance provides marketshare info
– 84% of top 200 law firms deploy Nuance software solutions
– 65% of Fortune 500 companies use Nuance
– 6 million knowledge workers will Nuance document capture solutions
– $3 billion hardware pull-through from Nuance print management
– 100,000 active deployments of print management solutions
– 50,000 Nuance document software transactions per year
– 99.8% is accuracy of the Nuance OmniPage OCR engine
– 85% of print management market is Nuance
Kyocera Mita dealer show notes
– Strategy is “Total Document Solutions” focus
– Will launch 15 new A3 MFPs (25ppm-80ppm) and 16 A4 MFPs (27ppm-42ppm) in 2016 o 1200x1200dpi at full engine speed
o WiFi and NFC will be standard
o New fuser design
o Polymerized toner technology
– Optional DM Connect Pro software solution with Zone OCR and advanced barcode imaging
– Optional Google Drive connector
– Optional DropBox connector
– Optional Square 9 connector
– Will launch its own enterprise content management solution, from its acquisition of Ceyoniq Software of Germany
Toshiba wins school district MFP fleet
– Award from Pittsford Central School District of New York
– Reasons given by CIO, Dr. Jeff Cimmerer, for choosing Toshiba branch o Grew tired of high-pressure sales tactics or non-responsive sales reps of other companies bidding
o Toshiba won “as a result of their knowledgeable, patient and friendly approach”
o “added a human touch to the process”
o “developed the most comprehensive and compelling product portfolio to better address our content management needs at a price point that made sense”
o “output management products and services clearly meet and in many cases exceed the lofty benchmark expectations we put into place during the RFP process” (FERPA and HIPAA regulatory concerns)
o Overall savings of 30%
Forecast for printers and MFPs
– The Information Equipment Business Committee of Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association (JEITA) published annual market forecast
– In 2015, laser based printer/MFP sales were 93% of prior year’s total worldwide
– By 2018, worldwide market will increase 9%
– Worldwide dot matrix printers down 5% to 3.04 million units
– Inkjet based systems down 4% to 68.14 million
Toshiba dealer show notes
– Some of the new MFP models have option to completely embed an OCR application or a print release solution for small workgroups, without need for separate server o More other embedded solutions in future
o Announced agreement with Nuance to market AutoStore and Equitrac solutions
– While Toshiba now offers digital signage solutions, only 10% of its dealers are actively selling them
– No plans to launch 3D printers
– More info on eSTUDIO 4505AC and 5005AC color A3 MFPs o replaces the 4555C, 5055C models
o 4505AC offers 45ppm for $25,181, and 5005AC offers 50ppm for $26,241
o All black plastic exterior (no offwhite or blue as in previous models)
o 45ppm and 50ppm respectively
o 1200x1200dpi (PostScript print driver only)
o Advertised as offering 256 gradations (but does not offer 8 bits per pixel)
o Claims to have automatic calibration
o Two document feeder options to choose from: § DSDF document feeder option can scan both sides of original at same time • Top scan speed of 240ipm (or 120opm)
- Holds up to 300 originals
- RADF document feeder option scan at top speed of 73opm • Holds up to 100 originals
o EPEAT Gold rated § Comply with Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS)
o Optional single or dual line fax board
o Max duty cycle up to 105,000 color impressions per month
o Color toners have yield of 33,600 pages each based on 5% coverage § Black toner yield of 36,400 pages
o 9” color touchscreen LCD control panel § Optional numeric keypad attaches on right side
o Paper drawers hold up to 12”x18” paper § Will support up to 140lb. index in auto duplex
- Optional envelope cassette holds 60
- Bypass accepts up to 110lb. cover • Holds up to 12”x47” banner paper
o Finishing options include: § 50 sheet stapling inner finisher
- 50 sheet stapling floor standing finisher
- Saddle stitch finisher
- Hole punch
o Built-in “eBRIDGE Next” print controllers § Actual maker unknown
- 1.33GHz Intel Atom dual core processor
- Web browser standard
- Linux operating system
- Optional Embedded OCR
- Optional “Multi-Station Print Enabler” allows users to retrieve print jobs from a series of networked MFPs via authentication
- Color profile tool to adjust color
- Scan to high compression PDF
- Optional IPsec security kit
- Universal print driver
- PCL, PS and XPS print drivers
- 4GB RAM
- 320GB Hard drive come with data security feature
Gartner worldwide IT spending forecast
– Devices (PC, smartphones, tablets, printers, MFPs) down 3.7% in 2016
– Data center systems up 2.1%
– Software up 4.2%
– IT services up 2.1%
– Communication services down 2%
Panasonic to launch new MFP?
– Launched new model in Europe, and it may launch in the U.S.
– The new DP-MB545 is a desktop b/w A4 MFP
– Base MSRP of $1199
– 45ppm top speed
– 1200x1200dpi
– 5 second first page out time
– RADF scans at top speed of 45opm and holds 75 originals
– Includes fax board
– Max duty cycle of 150K/month
– Drum yield of 100,000 pages o Toner cartridge yield of 25,000 pages based on 5% coverage
– 22”W x 19”D x 24”H
– Weighs 70lbs.
– Comes standard with 550 sheet paper drawer and 100 sheet stack bypass o The bypass can hold 11”x17” sheet size (engine prints up to 11” wide)
o Can add two more 550 sheet paper drawers for $145 each
– Built-in print controller o 1GB RAM
o 10/100/1000BaseT & USB ports
o WiFi standard
o PS and PCL print drivers
