Submitted By: Jim Hamilton on August 9, 2010
Who is buying high-speed continuous-feed process color printers? Early evidence indicates that it’s transaction printers. About 200 print engines in this class were placed around the world in 2009 but it hasn’t been entirely clear which environments have been most likely to buy them. It was my assumption that the quality and running cost capabilities of these devices made them attractive to transaction, direct mail, and some publication environments but I wondered whether that was really the case. I decided to look at the public announcements of companies that have placed such products to see what this said about market preferences. Read more »
Tags: 490/980, Books, catalogs, Color, Continuous Feed, data center, direct mail, Europe, HP, Impika, InfoPrint 5000, InfoPrint Solutions, Inkjet, Inkjet Web Press, IntelliJet, iPrint, JetStream, Kodak, Magazines, North America, Oce, offset, Pitney Bowes, Prosper, publications, Screen, Transaction, TruePress Jet 520, Versamark, Xerox
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Submitted By: Cathy Martin on July 15, 2010
The past few months have been pretty busy for Canon as they seek to protect their supplies in a big way. In May 2010, Canon filed several complaints with the Korean Trade Commission regarding its photosensitive drums used in printing equipment. Separately, at the end of June, Canon filed a complaint with the USITC (United States International Trade Commission) and a concurrent, separate lawsuit in district court regarding two patents covering the printer’s drive motor connection with the OPC drum in the toner cartridge. (See separate blog, “Canon Sues Ninestar and Others Over Toner Patents,” from June 30, 2010 ) For some time, many industry watchers were wondering if there was going to be any action regarding the increased activity in new build, compatible toner cartridges especially for HP/Canon laser printers. While there has been significant activity in inkjet, it has been very quiet on the toner side. Read more »
Submitted By: Alan Bullock on June 24, 2010
Xerox's Brian Segnit Delivers a Keynote Presentation at the 2010 PhotoPublishing Summit
InfoTrends’ 2010 PhotoPublishing Summit was held last week in Chicago. This event, now in its third year, brings together sponsors, invited VIP guests, and other representatives of print, photo, retail, and other industries to explore opportunities in the rapidly growing market for custom and short-run photo specialty products that help consumers to tell their life stories and businesses to communicate more effectively. Read more »
Tags: Ecce Terram, Eric Scott, FujiFilm, Hewlett-Packad, HP, iGen, Imaging Solutions, Indigo, LumaPix, Mediaclip, Mohawk, Mohawk Fine Papers, ODM, On Demand Machinery, Photo, photo book, Photo Publishing, Photobook, PhotoPublishing, Printing, Publishing, Taopix, Universal Laser Systems, VersaLASER, Xerox
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Submitted By: Jeff Hayes on June 17, 2010
Pitney Bowes is best known for selling, leasing and servicing mailing equipment to a large customer base across North America. While this business has grown steadily and generated strong cash flow for many years, it has come under significant pressure as Internet-based services displace first-class and direct mail.
Over the last 10 years Pitney Bowes has been deliberately re-inventing the company through acquisitions, partnerships, and internal initiatives to provide new services, reach new customers, and expand into other geographies.
After meeting with the Pitney Bowes senior leadership team last Thursday, our take is that the company is strongly focusing on software-based solutions and related services that complement its traditional mail business, generating substantially more revenue from enterprise accounts, and steadily expanding outside of North America.
Technology Fair at Pitney Bowes Global Innovation Day
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Submitted By: Ralf Schlozer on May 24, 2010
On May 20, 2010 Böwe Systec AG, one of the three global leading manufacturers of inserting equipment, declared the opening of insolvency proceedings (the German equivalent to chapter 11). The announcement by Böwe Systec came as a bit of a surprise to stock market analysts as orders for the first 4 months in 2010 had increased by 40% over the previous year, although revenues were down considerably in 2008 and 2009. The announcements, which came at IPEX 2010 in Birmingham UK (this year’s largest international graphic arts show) also took Böwe’s staff by surprise.
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Submitted By: Tim Greene on May 19, 2010
Hewlett Packard introduced a series of new wide format printers at the IPEX show in Birmingham England. These printers extend HP’s technology platforms and increase the addressable markets for HP and its customers.
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Submitted By: Jim Hamilton on May 18, 2010
Today at IPEX HP previewed the T200, a 22-inch web width companion to the 30-inch T300 Inkjet Web Press. The T200, which is capable of color speeds of 200 feet per minute (875 color letter images per minute) and black speeds of 400 feet per minute (1,750 black letter images per minute), will be formally announced at Graph Expo and will become available in 2011. Though the T200 builds on many components and technologies used in the T300, it is not a slimmed down T300, but instead a new design that uses an innovative paper path that prints both sides of the web without using a turnbar. The product will also be used by Pitney Bowes as the print engine for the new IntelliJet 20.
Supporting CMYK plus a fifth color (in addition to the heads that apply the bonding agent), the T200, like the T300, uses a tight web design. Instead of two separate print engines the T200 has two imaging areas within a single integrated device. The configuration shown at IPEX prints the four process colors plus the bonding agent. There is space for another color in the device and HP said that it would be adding MICR capability at a later date. Both HP and Pitney Bowes expect the device to be “plug compatible” as a replacement to monochrome toner-based devices where the user is looking to move to color and mixed color and black & white workflows.
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Tags: graph expo, HP, Indigo, Inkjet Web Press, Intelligent Print Process Manager, IntelliJet, IntelliJet 20, IntelliJet 30, IPEX, Pitney Bowes, T200, T300
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Submitted By: Matt Swain on May 17, 2010
A few weeks ago, I took advantage of a rainy Saturday morning and visited the Museum of Printing. At one point over the last year, I had promised Frank Romano that I would make the pilgrimage. After driving through the sleepy town of North Andover, MA, I arrived at a colonial brick building with a bell tower and a sign out front that indicated I had arrived. I noticed the weather vane on top of the bell tower had what looked like a cat on it – I was expecting Gutenberg.
I was a few minutes early, and surprised to find five cars in the parking lot already. As I walked through the door, it was only fitting to see Frank’s beaming face. “Hi Matt, you are just in time to join the tour that I am giving for Hesser College!” I had unwittingly walked in on Frank in one of his favorite personas – Professor Romano.
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Submitted By: Randall Dazo on April 23, 2010
On April 20, HP made a few new announcements to help strengthen its Managed Enterprise Services (MES) offering to its customers. HP has been offering Managed Print services through its direct organization for almost 4 years now. HP executives say that the company currently has approximately 2,500 customers and is managing approximately 18.5 billion pages under HP MPS programs. Back in September of 2009, HP formally named its program Managed Enterprise Services, in which executives reinforced the company’s Optimize, Manage, and Improve Workflow strategies with new solutions and an extended alliance with longtime partner Canon. This alliance was reinforced with an announcement made last week between HP, Canon, and Fedex Office. This new offering will bring about 12,000 devices into 1,800 locations where customers will be able to utilize these print and output solutions in a near site location. Read more »
Submitted By: Jim Hamilton on April 17, 2010
Two recent announcements shed some light on the progress that HP has made on the development of third-party produced papers that are enhanced for use on the T300 Inkjet Web Press:
- Georgia Pacific launched a line of treated uncoated stocks using ColorPRO technology. The ColorPRO brand denotes that the papers employ an HP-developed technology that facilitates high-quality print output on HP’s T300 Inkjet Web Press. The line of papers is called Spectrum Web Inkjet and is available now in the United States. (Link to Georgia-Pacific news)
- Appleton Coated will develop coated papers for the T300 Inkjet Web Press using HP technology under the Utopia brand. These papers will include matte and dull finishes designed for textbook, publication, direct mail, and other commercial printing applications. The substrates are currently in production trials and are expected to be available in mid-2010 in North America. (Link to Appleton news)
The Georgia Pacific release was notable in that it mentioned the ColorPRO brand. The Appleton release did not. The reason behind this is relatively simple. The Georgia Pacific stocks are uncoated. The Appleton stocks are coated. In response to a question from InfoTrends HP clarified that ColorPRO as a technology and a brand is for uncoated stocks only. Appleton’s coated stocks will employ an HP-developed technology, not ColorPRO, and therefore will not be part of the ColorPRO technology brand. Read more »
Tags: Appleton, bonding agent, coated, ColorLok, ColorPRO, dye, Georgia-Pacific, HP, Inkjet, Inkjet Web Press, paper, pigment, Spectrum, substrate, T300, treated, uncoated, untreated, Utopia
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