Covering Industry Developments in July 2023

  • Headline News: "Initial Results Shine a Light on First-Half Hardcopy Health" - Xerox, Canon, Epson and Kyocera releases their financial results for the April-June quarter in July. And if there's one common theme, it's that there's something about the post-pandemic "new normal" for every hardcopy vendor to dislike and to fear. But will this cause vendors to change ... faster?
  • The Editorial: "Going Over the Edge" - I don’t know what part of this breathless hyping of edge computing by hardcopy vendors bothers me more. Is it that some printer companies are simply embarrassing themselves by trying to pretend to be what they aren’t? Or is it that their delusions of being edge computing pioneers prevents them from pursuing other ways to diversify that are actually meaningful and more attainable?
  • In Other Big News:  "G&G Tries a New Slogan While the Industry Chooses to Ignore Ninestar’s Crimes" - In one of the most galling, truth-defying, tone-deaf, and all-around inappropriate marketing moves we can ever recall seeing in the hardcopy market or anywhere else, for that matter, Ninestar’s G&G non-OEM printer supplies unit has 14 announced a fatuous new global slogan: “Your Image Matters.” And as for the rest of the hardcopy industry — including various Ninestar companies, OEM customers and other erstwhile partners? — it's all crickets. Give me a freaking break! ... Shame, shame, we know your names.
  • Even More News - Sharp’s troubled display business is dragging down massive Foxconn. ... Kyocera has formed a US inkjet unit. ... Xerox is now down to just one small R&D lab after selling its Canada research center. ... Konica Minolta is being forced to pay another $220 million to acquire the rest of its troubled precision medicine business. ... Kyocera has sued the state of New Jersey over its Russia sanctions law. ... Konica Minolta has announced its Dispatcher ScanTrip Cloud capture tool. ... Kyocera is readying the US launch of some long overdue homegrown ECM software. ... HP has launched some essentially unchanged Samsung low-end lasers in India and a few other markets. ... HP is OEM'ing its latest A3 LaserJet office MFPs to Samsung to sell only in Korea. ... Brother and Canon have debuted cool paper-handling innovations in their latest AIOs outside the US. ... China's Cumtenn has released a few dozen updated A4 monochrome lasers. ... Deli has added some mildly enhanced AIOs and a B&W laser MFP in China. ... Some new Toshiba and Ricoh MFPs in Japan are head for their US dealer debuts. ... Germany's ThinPrint has released lucky version 13 of its print management software. ... On the wheels of several quiet settlements, patent troll Flexiworld is now suing Xerox over violating several of its homegrown WiFi patents. ... Plus more!