Transaction Printers Are the Leading Adopters of High-Speed Continuous-Feed Process Color Digital

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 »

InfoTrends Wraps Successful PhotoPublishing Summit

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 »

Thought Leadership and Books

On a regular basis Xerox invites customers and prospects to the Gil Hatch Center for Customer Innovation in Webster, New York to explore a given topic. They call these events Thought Leadership Workshops and there are usually about thirty to fifty attendees who in addition to getting the opportunity to hear speakers talk about the market, also benefit from seeing Xerox technologies first hand. Another benefit is that each of these attendees brings an added dimension of market experience to the workshop that they share with the group in interactions over the course of the event. I believe that these interactions are key aspect of the overall experience.

So I was delighted to be invited by Xerox to speak at a Thought Leadership Workshop on “The Changing Book Publishing Model” that took place recently. My job was to provide an update on current trends in digital printing at an evening event at Artisan Works, a remarkable non-profit Rochester institution that provides studio space and supports artists through a range of community activities while also providing one of the most unique venues for corporate entertainment that I have ever seen. In my talk I spent 45 minutes going over recent technology developments, providing some baseline definitions, tracking the history of digital book printing, and looking at some examples of how books are becoming more interactive.

Event at Artisan Works, Photo courtesy of Xerox Corporation

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My Pilgrimage to the Museum of Printing

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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Insights from the Xerox Financial Investor Conference

Xerox outlined its business strategy to approximately 100 members of the financial analyst community on Tuesday, May 4th at the New York Stock Exchange. Xerox has always been one of the thought leaders for the document technology and services industry, and typically does a good job articulating the critical trends, challenges and opportunities facing the industry. The event on Tuesday was no exception.

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Some Photos and Thoughts from ON DEMAND 2010

Having just returned from ON DEMAND 2010 I wanted to share a few impressions of the event, along with some photos, to give those who weren’t able to attend an idea of what it was like.

On the blue/red dividing line between the AIIM and ON DEMAND show floors

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Three Cut-Sheet Digital Printing Announcements Spark the Opening of ON DEMAND 2010

Lurking in the background as ON DEMAND 2010 opens are some very big questions about the economy, what the new combined Canon/Océ will look like, and whether any European visitors will make it to the show because of the volcano ash, but there is also some very big cut-sheet digital printing product news. Three new cut-sheet digital printing announcements are sure to be highlights of this year’s show: Read more »

Xerox Annual Partner Conference

Xerox recently held it’s annual partner conference where they brought together the production and office solutions partners for the first time. Last year Xerox made significant shifts to their business by internally combining their office and production groups breaking down these silos of their business. With that change also came bringing two separate partner groups together, office and production as one business unit. Leading this new group is Elizabeth Fox, Vice President, Solutions Business Team. The conference on the partner side consisted of about 1/3 production peripheral/accessories companies, 1/3 production solutions and 1/3 office solutions vendors. Xerox personnel consisted of partner program members and various sales organizations from around the world. Read more »

No Heidelberg at Graph Expo 2010

WhatTheyThink reported last week that neither Heidelberg nor Komori would exhibit at Graph Expo this year. This news represents the culmination of a trend that has been brewing over the past ten years at the Graph Expo and Print shows. Since 2004, InfoTrends has compared the Graph Expo show floor maps to provide an indication of market changes. These rankings are compiled by measuring the published show floor map. Initially InfoTrends began conducting this exercise to show the impact of the digital vendors on a trade show that had been dominated by traditional printing press vendors. This point has long since been made. For all practical purposes, as one looks at the list of top vendors, Graph Expo has become dominated by digital exhibitors.

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Getting Compact

I was reminded recently of a good example of innovative design. I had seen GBC’s eBinder at ON DEMAND 2009 in the Xerox booth where it was shown in-line with a Xerox Nuvera, but the full impact of the design took a while to sink in. As is often the case, a picture can tell the story better than a wordy description. The eBinder uses a single flat plastic consumable (see below) to form an elliptical lay-flat, wrap-around  binding that can support document page counts ranging from 2 to 100 sheets.

eBinder Ellipse consumable (top) and GBC ProClick consumable (bottom)

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