In the current imaging marketplace where multifunctional machines—whether printer or copier based—are vying for market share with standalone copiers and printers, confusion reigns, not only for consumers but also for the manufacturers themselves.
In a world in which a major copier manufacturer acquires a printer manufacturer and printer dealers are being wooed to also sell copiers, there is blurring of the lines that previously had defined copiers, printers and multifunctional machines. In an effort to make sense of it all, it may be useful to find out how the OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) and some of the companies that service and sell imaging machines view this quickly changing landscape.
But first we have to determine which category an imaging machine falls into—and that is not easy. How do we define a digital copier-printer when we cannot find a “copy” button on it? Multifunctional machines have thrown traditional copiers into an identity crisis, but even in a world where copying is less well-defined, the copier is not dead. The new digital copier-printer, whether networked or standalone, can copy and print cheaply, often using lower-cost consumables. But unlike printers, today’s copier does not pay for itself without frequent use.
Some people may be surprised that just as in the halcyon analog days, standalones are a significant part of copier sales, although the numbers have dwindled in the last few years. Quick-copy companies, libraries, convenience stores or other retail stores still use standalone digital copiers. But like the standalone printers connected only to one or two computers, the numbers of such copiers are gradually declining.
What to Call It?
Most companies have copiers, but if a printer scans to print and performs the same function as a copier, why is it necessary to refer to them as different devices? The difference is in the technology, explains Simon Jessop, senior staff engineer at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, N.Y. “For the light-lens copier, that evolution has been a little bit different because the copier has very low running costs. What has changed here is the ability to connect to the network, to scan once, print many times and pack other functions into the software. But the main difference from the technology standpoint is the running technology. The marking engine is a lot cheaper on a dual-component, higher-volume device [a copier] as long as the volume is there.”
Such functions as sorting, binding and some zoom functions are often absent with non-copier based MFPs. But manufacturers such as Ricoh, West Caldwell, N.J., allow the addition of a scanner on any device so that it can become a copier, according to Russell Marchetta, director of media relations. “When you have a digital copier, being digital means you can make it into an MFP. Whether the customer wants it or not, the (copier) capability is on all our digital products. All of our copier products are digital and also MFP products, because they all have the capability for printing and faxing and scanning.” Ricoh does not sell standalones, and shares an attitude common among OEMs that with a few additions and reconfiguring any of its devices can be a copier.
Canon USA, Lake Success, N.Y., has the attitude that the functionality of a printer and copier-based MFP are often the same, according to Dennis Amorosano, director and general manager of the Integrated Solutions Division at Canon USA. “When we look at that line today, all of our MFPs at their core are basically digital copiers that offer the ability to be expanded to support additional functionality. In essence, if you are a customer and you acquire an imageRUNNER device that is used as a standalone digital copier, the functionality of that standalone digital copier is no different than the functionality of a copying function of the MFP that would be fully equipped in that same product line.”
Marketing the new digital copier-printer has its challenges in the conservative market of the Shenandoah Valley of northern Virginia. David Lawall, owner of DDL Business Systems, LLC, Stephens City, Va., explained that once the analog copier moved to digital, it became multifunctional. Sometimes, it is marketed the same as an MFP. “We use the terms digital copier and MFP interchangeably,” Lawall said. “It depends on who we are talking to. If we are talking to IT departments, we are talking more about MFPs. If we are talking to typical office managers, we use ‘copier,’ because the digital copier is within their frame of reference. If we get into too much detail about imaging systems and MFPs, their eyes glaze over.”
With copiers and printers becoming less well-defined and copier-dominated companies soliciting printer companies to become dealers, the lines may blur in the future. “The copier dealers are going to become copier-printer dealers, and the printer dealers are going to become printer and copier dealers,” said Wilhelm Rebmann, co-owner of Laserspeed, Lawrenceville, N.J., a printer-founded company that has been approached to do just that.
Function Determines Choice
The abilities of the networked, digital copier-printer are sometimes outshined by the marketing glitz of the printer-based MFPs. It may seem as if an office icon is being put out to pasture, but copier-printer based MFPs can eclipse other machines on some tasks. “It is really just where they evolved from,” said Jessop. As an engineer devoted to studying “marking engines” (the internal machine that transfers marks to paper), he talked about one of the main differences between copier-printers and printers: “You have a dual-component copier with lower running costs set up for a higher throughput and that is going to be your better bet, if you can justify the volume. What these machines are not good at is sitting around. They are born to run, and they run well and they run cheaply—if you are using them. On the other hand, printers have the advantage of working well whether you use them once a month or 10 times a minute.”
Why choose a printer-based MFP? “I think it is access more than anything,” said Dan Vetal, president of LaserAge Digital Solutions, Manassas, Va. “It is not having to walk down the hall to the copier. It is having it [MFP] there in your office or right around the corner. The prices are being pushed down on these machines to a point where it is affordable to have four or five of them in your office instead of four or five printers with a big copier down the hall.”
Joy Lipari, manager of product marketing for the Stamford, Conn.-based Xerox, felt that technology providers such as Xerox have the responsibility to educate dealers about how using MFP technology can help customers to be more productive and realize a higher return on their technology investments.
“Copier/printer technology empowers users to copy and print from a single source, but it also enables them to transform information from hard copy to digital,” Lipari said. “Additionally, it offers the ability to perform multiple tasks and provides finishing features that standalone printers do not offer. For some SMBs (small-to-midsized businesses), the multifunction product becomes the cornerstone of their document-management program, as it allows them to simplify their business with asset consolidation of associated resources and supplies.”
Many “early adapters” saw the economics of copier-based MFPs versus standalone equipment, according to Amorosano. “They quickly came to the realization that over the life of those products in their environment, based upon the volumes they would run, it was in most cases much more cost-effective to migrate to copier-based MFPs. We have seen that trend really take off in the last two to three years.”
Most Times Not an Either/Or
In the mid-1990s when fax machines were the original multifunctional machines, copier-printers had not made much of an impact on workgroup printers, and even now are often used in tandem. Printers have stubbornly refused to give up turf. Manny Kostas, vice president of marketing, Enterprise Imaging and Printing Division, Hewlett-Packard, based in Palo Alto, Calif., said that there is little doubt that printer-based MFPs are a better fit for lower-volume workgroup applications and work-team applications. He explained that Hewlett Packard (HP) believes that customers want a versatile, multifunction device that prints, copies, sends, faxes and scans independent of architecture: “Customers want these devices to all work well and work well together, regardless of the underlying technology… That said, HP sees copier-based MFP technology (multi-part consumables, more robust engines, paper-handling) as a better fit for higher-volume design centers…” He went on to say that where there are higher monthly print volumes and paper-handling requirements, the copier-based MFP technology offsets the higher hardware costs by providing lower-cost pages.
“There is this big fear whenever there is a copier,” Vetal said, speaking about the fear that many printer-centric companies have about copier companies. “Guess what? The copier is more like the printer than the printer is like the copier.” It is no surprise that HP is offering copier lines, and companies such as Xerox or Konica Minolta are venturing more into printers.
In the printer arena, many, like Rebmann, seldom lose business because the customer installs a digital copier-printer. But he and other printer-based companies are being lured by copier companies to expand into the copier area. “I also see the copier companies giving in to the printer business and going as printer companies and shifting their whole focus,” Rebmann said. “Look at Xerox. They bought Tektronix. They bought them because they make printers. Xerox printers were not really that great. Tektronix had a decent printer on the color end, and if you look at the office products division—which is the printer division—that is really driving the company more now than the copier division.”
Tips for Trend Watchers
Once the digital era dawned, it fueled a new printer-copier feud that has been explored before in the pages of Imaging Spectrum. It also caused people in the printer market to watch copiers more ardently. Here are some trends printer-centric companies will have to look for in the copier-printer/MFP/printer market of the future:
The printer world will have to track true cost per page to stay competitive. The difference in consumables has caused some foot shuffling among people in the printer market. The economics of copier versus printer use is sometimes dependent upon how consumables are packaged. With digital copiers, drum and developers are separate and consumables are replaced as a part rather than as a unit, so the cost of consumables goes down, according to Lawall. Most clients on a cost-per-page program have fixed costs on a per-page basis. There are cost-per-page software programs being developed to compare the cost of pages.
Vetal predicted that printer companies will be forced to manage costs in a way similar to the way it is done with copiers. And if they do not, their competition will beat them. “The whole cost-per-page thing right now, for the majority of remanufactured printer companies out there, is very, very difficult to manage,” Vetal said. “They are going to be forced to find partnerships where there is a solution available. HP, Xerox—all these guys—are going to come out with their own solutions in time. I really believe that they will, because this is the way a lot of larger companies want to go since they want cost management.”
Monochrome and color copiers will continue to compete and drive down prices. An “affordable copier” used to be almost an oxymoron, but there are digital copier-printers now in the under-$2,200 range for high monochrome output and occasional color use. For even lower-segment, laser-toner machines, the under-$1,000 price barrier has been breached. Cost-per-page studies of the copier-printer place monochrome per-page costs at about a cent, and color prices at 8.5 cents per page compete with and sometimes are lower than per-page costs for color printers.
But on the other end, printers are getting better image quality and adding features in “kind of an evolutionary process up the chain,” Jessop said.
“The way I look at this from a technology standpoint is if you have your monochrome printers on the low end that are getting faster and are adding features, that technology was intended to get a low cost on every tabletop printer. The revenue stream is the consumables; so the running costs are pretty high on those [printers], and they are trying to get more and more market share.”
The copier does have a separate identity. Many of those responding have defined the copier according to the higher-volume work it performs. But it is pretty easy to define if someone uses the consumer yardstick. “To the general public, you can call them a document-imaging system, an MFP, or anything you want—or even a document solution,” said Marchetta. “People look at it and say, ‘Hey, there’s the copier.’”
An interesting aspect to this topic is whether there will be less differentiation in the future. Statisticians have adhered to the six copier segments, defined by speed of output, although CAP Ventures has migrated to a definition of a “Universal Copier Printer” (UCP). “They still say they are copiers, but for the most part, everybody knows they are digital copiers, which make them MFPs,” says Marchetta. “But nobody comes out with a category of MFPs to put in market share segments; so they still call them copiers, which is fine.”
Copiers are an ‘on-ramp’ to multiple uses. Whether the paperless office is hitting the wall or not, it is easy to see the utility of scanning to e-mail or other uses where paper is reduced to bytes of information. “Whether copying is done on a standalone device or on an MFP, it needs to be fast, reliable and easy-to-use,” Lipari stated. “Digital copiers are the foundation of an MFP and provide the on-and-off ramp to technology that facilitates not only hard-copy output but also the transfer of information from hard copy to digital. As businesses of all sizes become more digital, electronic or Web-based repositories will become the norm. MFPs that scan information directly to central repositories will replace costly offsite storage facilities and crowded filing rooms, freeing up dollars and space.”
Final Arbiter: The Consumer
One in five office workers spends at least 60 percent of each workday dealing with documents, according to Xerox, so it is important to know the role of each machine. The office consumer and others in the SOHO market, or even those using copiers at grocery stores, determine how useful any device will be and how often it will be used, no matter how dizzying the technology. People in both the printer and copier orbits say that the market is changing for the various machines. Lines have blurred and yet, each device has retained its identity. The copier has its own niche, too. Whether there is a “copy” button on every copier, the consumer will figure out what the new machines do best and use them accordingly.