Maybe Kyocera or HP will take a nibble at Kodak

Turned up a November 16 article.

11/16 post; "SNS Securities said HP & Kyocera had sufficient financing options for a counter bid for Oce" http://ilnk.me/a39

So if they have enough money for Oce, they have enough money for the Kodak print piece.

The web and printed books can play nicely together.

- Technology and Learning - Inside Higher Ed:

"When we get to a point that a mobile version is expected of whatever content we want to interact with, not having a mobile version may cut-off the desire to consume that content.

People who teach courses, and those of us who also work with people who design and teach courses, need to recognize that we are more likely to succeed in having our students engage with the curricular content if our students can access this content on a platform that they choose.

Students are amongst the busiest people on earth. Perhaps they will be more likely to read an assigned chapter if they can grab some snippets during those 'in-between' times on their mobile device. Later they can crawl up for extended times with the paper book, or on an e-reader, the point is to offer choice."

Maybe KBA will take a nibble at Kodak?

KBA eyes new business lines as rival manufacturers post losses
printweek.com
William Mitting, printweek.com, 20 November 2009

Press manufacturer KBA is to move into solar energy and water treatment technology as it seeks to diversify, rather than 'enter a merger in a shrinking market'.

Speaking after the company said that it would explore 'new fields of operation', chief executive Helge Hansen said that, while print manufacturing would remain core, the company would explore acquisitions in 'new business lines with good prospects for growth and earnings'.

He identified these sectors as packaging, digital print, water treatment and solar thermal technology."

It's pretty clear that something has to give at Kodak. The transition from the film business to another business has been brutal. They've made a great run and have created some great pockets of value. But the money has pretty much run out. The Kodak Gallery is a jewel. Gezillions of users have stored their high res photos. It should have a very long tail. The Kodak moment is still the sustainable margin deliverable.

Meanwhile the Creo Scitex piece is a jewel in it's own right. I assume, but don't know, that Creo gives Kodak a strong lead in the offset workflow. Scitex dna gives them deep expertise and knowledge in inkjet. Sooner or later Stream will come to market. But what could have been a first mover advantage is gone.

This week Kodak's market cap was $1.1 billion dollars. That is less than the cost plus assumption of debt that Canon is offering for Oce. It's less than Ricoh paid for Ikon. Meanwhile, Kodak owns KKR $700 million dollars. I just can't see KKR waiting patiently for a return.

This week had a big surprise with the Canon offer. The following weeks promise to be interesting as the inevitable reorganization of the global print industry continues.

"Canon and Oce" by Cary Sherburne. I don't have a lot to add.

The tweet.

"Canon and Océ: More Details" by Cary Sherburne @WhatTheyThink http://ilnk.me/a11

HP India and most everyone else takes a hit. Canon and Epson India market share up .

One has to wonder what Oce's possiblities might be in India where print is most definitely not even close to being dead.

HP India Loses Printers Market Share in Q3:

CRN Network, November 19, 2009, 1030

Market leader HP saw negative growth of nearly 32 percent in Q3 2009 in the printers, copiers and MFP segment, shaving off almost 10 percent of its market share during the period, according to a latest Gartner report.

The biggest market share gainer has been Canon, which posted a 48 percent growth in overall printer shipments thus growing its market share from 11 percent in Q3 2008 to 19 percent in Q3 2009." Epson too saw a growth of 14 percent in unit shipments.

On the other hand, several other top-tier vendors experienced significant shipment declines in the Q3 of 2009. Shipment declines by vendors such as Xerox with a 58 percent decrease, followed by Panasonic with 39 percent, HP at 32 per cent, Brother with 28 percent and Samsung Electronics with 21 per cent decline primarily contributed to overall decline of the market.

Roger Belanger, Director, GossRSVP, LLC has it just right about interactive print

The common wisdom is that sales are motivated by fear and greed. In my experience, for a going enterprise, decisions are made in the service of managing risk, or what might be more clearly referred to as fear.

Now that newspaper management is more afraid of losing control - through a bankruptcy or a buy out - the time may finally be right for them to get over the legitimate competing fear that "the emperor has no clothes. "

Roger Belanger, Goss RSVP clarifies the situation in much more palatable language.

From the Goss RSVP blog:

We see two main factors that continue to hold back the growth of interactive print. The first I believe is a myth and the second an opportunity.

First we continue to see reluctances by publishers, especially newspapers, wanting to allow metrics to be part of their offering. They seem scared they will loose advertisers or advertisers will be able to leverage the cost they pay for an ad if their ad only gets a few hits in a given print publication. Though one would like to say print metrics and page views are one in the same they are not. Just like on the internet, there are millions of pages that get seen everyday, but not clicked on. But the ones that do get clicked on some metrics are provided, great!

So if print publishers can break this mind set, or myth, and separate ad sales from the fear that metrics will erode sales, we believe then interactive print technology will really take off.

Secondly, publishing & editorial tools do not have interactive features as part of their front end offerings, thus making it a bit more expensive & cumbersome to add after the fact. This is mainly a technology issue, but more importantly an opportunity for the print publishing industry to capitalize

Hendrik and Wanja invented Newspaper 3.0 in Berlin

On Monday, November 16, , Hendrik Tiedemann and Wanja S. Oberhof launched Niiu in Berlin. Since I am illiterate in German I have to depend on Google Translate. It was reported in Germanin Germany in column by FOCUS-Online-author Claudia Frickel . The article in Google Translate English is here.

The subscribers will select up to 14 on the clock "Niiu" homepage by clicking, what content it wants to read. He can currently access to 17 local and national newspapers, including American and one Russian.The reader may also select specific departments and determine how many pages he wants from the respective newspaper - but not search for individual articles. Incorporated in each case is the complete page, including advertisements. The areas of interest can change daily.

In addition, the "Niiu" can be supplemented with Internet content from about 500 portals . On the last page for example, information is collected from blogs or printed Facebook messages from friends.

If interested in the business model for education, check out the previous post including the comments. If interested in the commercial model, consider that predictive analytics on consumer behavior is the high margin deliverable for print. Then think about the analytics possible if you have a data base that tells you what a user thinks is interesting.

If you add QR codes,
it means you can drill down even further to see which articles were interesting enough for the user to make the click to the web. You could also tell an advertiser exactly when and where the user clicked on an ad.

Yesterday the newspaper world changed in Berlin. Tomorrow the "textbook" world in the States. Go Oce! + Canon ? WOW.

The story is from Deutsche Welle | 16.11.2009: You can read the full story at the click.

Customized 'Niiu' newspaper launched |
"'Every Niiu is only printed once for every reader. You can also add the logo of your favorite soccer club or something like that,' he said.

Several German newspapers and magazines at a kioskBildunterschrift: Gro�ansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Newsprint is having an existential crisis

In effect, Niiu allows the reader to be his own editor, choosing the news he or she wants from the company's website. The price is not much more than the newsstand price of most German papers - 1.80 euros ($2.70).

Oberhof continues: 'I can say I want the front page of a regional newspaper, for example the Tagesspiegel from Berlin. And then I can say I want the sports section of the Bild and politics from "

The point is that the same technology makes versioned newspapers simple to adapt to fill the vacuum created by the end of textbooks.

Consider that instead of the reader, a teacher chooses just the right content for next week. Add QR codes and you get performance metrics that allow detecting early warning signs of a student at risk.

Add some quizzes, some links to YouTube Edu and reserve 2 pages for student writing and art.

It's done.

OutputLinks on Canon & Oce. There's a new 800 pound gorilla in the world of Print.

The smart people at OutputLinks, see the same thing I think I see. The story is at
Canon and Oce to Create Global Leader in Printing Industry.

The money sentence:

Canon and Océ aim to create the overall No. 1 presence in the printing industry;

I can't see a reason why they couldn't do it. My only problem is that it sounds like I'm going to have to tender my Oce shares. It was fun while it lasted.

Canon to acquire Oce . Ricoh took Ikon. Canon fights back. What will Fuji do?

It shouldn't be that surprising.

The titans of print are based in Tokyo. The yen is playing under new rules after the recent election in Japan. Oce owns the HVTO space and is first to play in versioned newspapers. With their history of the DNN they have first mover advantage. Today, Nov 16, the really disruptive innovation for versioned and personalized newspapers goes live in Berlin. http://ilnk.me/47e

But it's too late for Oce get a space on the desktop or the CRD. On top of it all, Canon took a big hit from Ricoh when they bought IKON and replaced the Canon boxes with Ricoh boxes.

What's next?
What I'm seeing is that outsourced print and insourced print will just be print. That's what Xerox EPS is about. Given that KKR has recently joined the party, Kodak will probably spin off the Creo and Scitex piece to focus on their core dna in photo and the consumer space.

The last remaining question is what will HP do? I'm hoping they will spin off the Indigo piece so that it can get the focus it needs to be number one in commercial digital printing.

But whatever happens next, it's pretty clear to me that today, the printernet took a huge step forward.

Canon in £655m bid to acquire Océ
Tim Sheahan, printweek.com, 16 November 2009

Canon is set to acquire Oce after making a 730m euro ($655m) cash offer for the digital press manufacturer.

Japan-based Canon has made an offer of €8.60 per Oce share, which represents a premium of 70% more than the company's closing share price at the end of play on 13 November, valuing the company at €730m.

The deal hinges on the offer being accepted by Oc�s ordinary shareholders, a decision that has been fully recommended by the company's board."

Oce, Infoprint, Riso and HP go to Washington

For anyone who has followed my blog for a while, you know that I think the real opportunities for the revival of Print are in the fields of education, health and government. Not in marketing.
In fact, I've been on the same little soapbox since 2005. So it makes sense that the story in Outputlinks would catch my attention.

HP, Oce, Infoprint was to be expected. RISO at the table surprised me a bit. But as far as I can tell Xerox didn't participate. That's interesting.

From Outputlinks:

On November 4, INTERQUEST hosted the 2009 Digital Printing in Government and Higher Education Forum, with nearly 100 attendees from federal, state, and local government, and colleges and universities.

The event kicked off with a morning session geared toward both environments. Speakers from leading printing systems vendors shared their companies' strategies, product offerings, and initiatives in these markets. Speakers included Jim Strief, Eastern Regional Manager for Hewlett-Packard's Publications Sector for High Speed Inkjet and Indigo; Jay Ainslie, Americas Director for Software, Services and Solutions Marketing for the InfoPrint Solutions Company; Bryan Beauchamp, Vice President of Business Development and Federal Sales for Océ Document Printing Systems Division; and David Murphy, Vice President of Marketing for RISO Inc.

The forum was sponsored by leading industry players, including Cascades, Hewlett-Packard, InfoPrint Solutions Company, Kodak, MGI, Océ, Rimage, and RISO, with additional support from American Printer, the Association of College and University Mail Services, Inc. (ACUMS), the Federal Electronic Document Systems Association (FEDS), the Franklin Technical Society (FTS) In-plant Graphics, the Interagency Council on Printing & Publications Services (ICPPS), the National Association of College and University Mail Services (NACUMS), the National Government Publishing Association (NGPA), the University Mail Managers Association (UMMA), and the Xplor Mid Atlantic Region (MAR).

"Sign and Graphic Imaging Middle East 2010 off to a great start"

This may be just pre show hype or it might be real. Consider the attendance for Print 09, then consider what they say from the Middle East. Based the value of the Australian currency and after having read Re-Orient, 1998 by Andre Gunder Frank, my bet is that it's for real.

Sign and Graphic Imaging Middle East 2010 off to a great start | Sign & Graphic Imaging (SGI) | AMEinfo.com:

"Now in its 12th year, Sign and Graphic Imaging Middle East 2010 (SGI) is enjoying a steady flow of international and regional exhibitor registrations, which will match if not surpass participation at SGI 2009 despite the economic downturn."