When digital worlds collide – the saga continues…
So now we had HP introducing multifunctional devices to the marketplace essentially trying to dominate the sandbox occupied by Xerox, Océ and KIP and one could argue that it was precipitated by Xerox allying themselves with Encad earlier on.
Xerox, in an attempt not to be taken lightly, abandoned the sinking Encad whose tattered corpse was all but left for dead until Kodak lapped them up. Of course, who could blame Kodak for looking for a new niche. After all, with the shrinking market for photographic film brought on by digital camera technology, Kodak really needed to find another avenue to drive revenue. It was rapidly apparent though, even to Encad’s new owners, that the train had left the station and too much damage had been done already so they turned their attention to production and transactional printing systems and let HP have what they had fought so hard for. Probably wise on their part.
Xerox ventured out on their own and internally developed Xerox X2 which was, surprisingly enough to its developers, a relatively successful product for them.
KIP did nothing but continue to focus on low-cost mono systems probably reasoning that the other LED manufacturers would be pouring less R&D into it and would eventually lag behind them. The philosophy being that it’s always advantageous to be the last man standing in a fight. Oce didn’t jump in immediately but rather held back and poured R&D money into color.
After much analysis and R&D, Océ launched TCS400, TCS500 and TCS300 in succession aiming at bringing multiroll productivity to the inkjet world. Until then, HP had only really dabbled in multi-roll capability until then with an OEM Basys roll feed unit which became affectionately known as the paper jammer. (see photo) Oce’s 
ColorWave 600 followed in 2009 – a revolution in speed and productivity combining the best of IJ and the best of toner based worlds and in 2009/10, ColorWave 300 hit the market which most people thought would have been a scaled back ColorWave 600 but….it was not. Instead, it was a return to inkjet technology offering a multi-roll all-in-one unit to accompany their PlotWave 300 – its companion on the monochrome side of the house.
Xerox had no response nor did KIP but both continued to bolster their monochrome offerings with new products at different performance/price points. It should be noted that Xerox did return to Kodak for one more kick at the can after the discontinuance of X2 and picked up on one more generation of Encad printers for a short period of time only to quickly realize that Encad was well and truly a thing of the past.
Now we are in late 2010 and HP has announced 2 new products of significance – the T2300 and the T7100. Identifying Océ as a threat to their market position, these products are designed to go head to head with ColorWave 300, ColorWave 600 and PlotWave 300. Is this an attempt to decimate their competition in the same grand style as Encad? It’s highly likely that it is, however big brother Canon has entered the sandbox now and HP is ever watchful to see what the fallout might be. Of course, you would think that HP would want to tread lightly in this arena owing to the fact that clearly the vast majority of their highly successful Laserjet print engines are manufactured by Canon.
Ah, to be a fly on the wall in the office of Leo Apotheker.
Such a conundrum!
-Robert
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