Thursday, October 28, 2010

This Week in Copiers "Industry Updates" 10/24/10

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- Hewlett Packard sued by some of its shareholders. The lawsuit claims that HP permitted or encouraged illegal kickbacks and bribes to government agencies to win bids. In August, HP had agreed to pay a $55 million fine to settle a U.S. Justice Dept. probe over alleged bribery.
- Hewlett Packard announced it would hire 2,000 workers in Bulgaria for a development and support center.
- Hewlett Packard announced it had completed its $1.5 billion acquisition of ArcSight, maker of security software.

- Hewlett Packard, at its Innovation Summit in Singapore, announced that it will offer Toshiba MFPs to its managed print services customers in Asia/Pacific region. HP already is offering Canon MFPs in the U.S. Unknown if HP will offer Toshiba MFPs in the U.S.
- Hewlett Packard announced it has appointed Gail Galuppo as new Senior VP of Worldwide Strategy & Marketing for the printer/MFP division. Ms. Galuppo was hired from Western Union, and will work from San Diego office, reporting to Vyomesh Joshi, executive VP.

- Hewlett Packard is threatening to cancel a large number of resellers for failing to sell enough HP maintenance and warranty service contracts (HP CarePacks), according to Computer Resellers News magazine.
- Hewlett Packard won a managed print services contract from large law firm, Allens Arthur Robinson:

o locations across Asia and Australia

o 3 year contract

o Also includes document management system (DMS)

o Replaced 408 printers with 206 MFPs

o Reduced page volume from 61 million pages to 24 million

o Claims will reduce costs by $3 million over life of contract

o Help desk calls about printer/MFP issues down from 30% of total to 3%

o Attorneys no longer have a personal printer

- EFI announced a new version of PrintMe, that will allow users of Apple iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Google Android cell phones to print to an Internet enabled device.
- In a surprise move, Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie, announced he is leaving the company.
- Adobe announced it will ship a new version of Acrobat software, called Acrobat X, featuring:

o rebuilt scanning and OCR engine

o scanned files are 50% smaller

o automatic color and grayscale detection

o uses OCR software from IRIS of Belgium

o integration with MS SharePoint

o ability to export files to MS Word or MS Excel

o basic commenting functionality
- CVision of Queens, New York, announced it won research grants from the National Science Foundation to develop new JBIG compression technology to increase speed of OCR scanning. The company’s goal is to allow copier companies to have built-in OCR that can make a searchable PDF as fast as the copier’s scan speed.
- Sharp announced it will scale back its laptop computer operations and instead focus on making the new Sharp Galapagos tablet PC. Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported that Sharp will cease all PC desktop and laptop manufacturing due to declining sales.
- Loffler Companies, a Konica Minolta dealer in Minnesota, was named to the prestigious Inc. 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the U.S.
- Ricoh announced that it is now on the Premier Group Purchasing Organization (GPO) contract, to enable its branches, IKON and dealers to market to member healthcare facitlities.
- Samsung of Korea filed suit against Panasonic over patents in the manufacture of secure digital memory cards.

- IKON/Ricoh and GE Capital were sued in Florida. Apparently, customer Kenneth Hackett & Associates is trying to get out of their lease due to a dispute over click charges.
- Kodak an acquisition target? That is the opinion recently published by George Conboy, President of Brighton Securities.
- Brainware Inc. of Ashburn, Virginia, announced contract wins for its Intellicapture scan capture software:

o Will be relabeled by Oracle as Oracle Forms Recognition

o Installs include:

 NEC Europe

 Mueller Industries

 Lafarge

 Rabobank

 Cook’s Childrens Hospital

 Resurrection Healthcare

 Gilead Healthcare

 Gunderson Lutheran Healthcare

 Mayo Clinic

- Canon announced that so far this year, it has planted 38,000 trees in the U.S. as part of its Generation Green Program. Canon makes the donation for every qualifying imageRUNNER MFP sold.
- Jefferson Parish School Board of New Orleans was sued by CIT Leasing for failing to make payments on its copier lease. The 5 year lease started on 6/15/2006.
- Carr Business Systems, a dealer owned by Xerox/Global in New York, announced it won a contract as a preferred office equipment supplier for the members of the Greater New York Home Furnishing Association.
- MGI of Australia announced it sold a Meteor DP60 Pro digital color system to JP Graphics, a printshop in Appleton, WI.
- Kyocera (Kyoto Ceramic Company) announced it will sponsor the Anderson Cooper 360 show on CNN cable TV.
- Toshiba announced it will resell the new 700 and 7100 wide format b/w systems from KIP.
- Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, announced the next version of Macintosh computer operating system will be called Mac OS X 10.7 Lion.
- Gregory Lavallo and Amelia Abdulmagid were arrested for using a color copier to make fake $100 bills in Amsterdam.

-=Good Selling=-

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