Earlier this month, Funai Electric Company announced what, at first blush, seems to be a truly terrible idea: it is going to sell Kodak-branded consumer/SOHO printers and consumables. Maybe that is too harsh a judgment. After all, it is not a terrible idea for everybody involved. It is a pretty good idea for Kodak to
I have written about my low print volumes in the past, so I won’t again bore you with the details of how and why my print volumes fell off a cliff (see “Confessions of a Former Tree Killer”). Suffice it to say I print an embarrassingly small number of pages, especially for someone who works
As reported by Actionable Intelligence last week (see “HP Sues Ninestar and Apex Micro for Patent Infringement”), Hewlett-Packard has filed suit in U.S. federal district court for infringement of its U.S. patent numbers 6,089,687 (the ‘687), 6,264,301 (the ‘301), and 6,454,381 (the ‘381). Named as defendants in the suit are Ninestar Image Tech Limited (Ninestar China), Ninestar
In a press release issued on October 6, HP made it official—it will be splitting into two organizations at the end of 2015’s fiscal year. The company identified names, with printers and PCs forming “HP Inc.,” and the remainder (think S’s—servers, storage, services) to be called “Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.” And it was also revealed that the
On September 23, Canon U.S.A. announced a new line of office inkjets, dubbed MAXIFY. The new line is interesting because for many years, with a few exceptions, Canon has largely targeted consumers and small-office/home-office (SOHO) users with a lineup of sub-$200 PIXMA inkjet printers and all-in-ones. The new MAXIFY line, however, sports higher price points
Despite recent debate to the contrary, disruptive innovation is alive and well in our industry Earlier this summer, several articles emerged in the popular press that took hard looks at the conventional thinking in the business world about disruptive innovation and the validity of the well-established theory of a regular procession of industry leaders being
It is almost the fourth of July. It is finally summer. Most of you are probably thinking about heading to the beach or pool, family cookouts, and other fun seasonal activities. The last thing you or I want to think about is U.S. law pertaining to patent exhaustion. Because that sounds just exhausting, doesn’t it?
When I read the news of the merger between Clover Technologies and MSE last week (see “Clover and MSE Announce Strategic Merger”), I was surprised but not shocked. Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity is nothing new in the aftermarket supplies industry. Particularly over the last few years most of us have gotten used to seeing
I received word yesterday that the two largest remanufacturers in the United States, Clover Technology and Micro Solutions Enterprises (MSE), are merging. After witnessing a lot of M&A activity over the past year or so, I was aware that the urge to merge was strong within the third-party supplies industry. Heck, I’ve even predicted several
As I was writing the latest in a long line of stories about mobile printing, I had an epiphany. No—epiphany isn’t the right word. It was exactly the opposite of an epiphany, really. It was a long-held belief cementing itself in my brain. It was the belief that mobile printing will never really happen. Now,