What's new?
Jun 1, 2007 12:00 PM, By Gilles Biscos and David Davis
With Drupa, the big international print event, only eight months away, most vendors will save their fireworks for Germany. Even so, there are plenty of good reasons to attend Graph Expo, and we may see some surprises.
Our recent research into the in-plant market finds that more in-plants are acquiring or planning to acquire digital presses. From a hardware standpoint you can expect to see more high-speed digital color presses. Graph Expo will be the first public showing in the U.S. of the new HP press 5500 and 3500 announced in May of this year, as well as the first U.S. showing of the NexPress S3000 unit, which was announced earlier this year.
Transpromo and inkjet
Promotional transactional printing and direct mail are also hot applications at the moment, and you will probably be able to see new devices — particularly inkjet-based presses — targeted at these applications. Two years ago in Chicago, Dainippon Screen unveiled the TruePress Jet520, and last year at Graph Expo IBM showed a technology demonstration of what has since been introduced as the InfoPrint 5000 — an ink jet press based on the Dainippon Screen engine and capable of producing 916 letter size impressions per minute. Olympus presented a prototype of a continuous-feed full-color ink jet press targeted at OEM customers last year in Chicago. A few months ago Agfa announced a new version of the :Dotrix ink jet press — the :Dotrix Transcolor — specifically targeted at the transactional printing market. Thus, we will continue seeing more action in this area — both from the traditional leaders in this market place as well as from newcomers trying to grab a piece of the pie. In-plant and IT printing operations (or those who have combined forces) should take note. You can also expect to see inkjet solutions capable of printing fixed data along with full-color variable images on envelopes at very high speeds.
High-speed toner
You will also see new high-speed toner-based machines as well, such as the Xerox DocuColor 8000AP (80 ppm) introduced in May which brings significant enhancements in terms of productivity and media flexibility, or the new Canon ImageRUNNER C5185 which was announced in June. You may also discover some new high-speed full-color continuous-feed electrophotographic systems competing head-on with the ink jet presses noted earlier.
Save room for some software
On the software side of the house, expect to see a great deal of activity in three areas in particular: variable data printing; Web-to-print, which is growing rapidly among in-plants and commercial providers; and workflow solutions aimed at streamlining production and interfacing with conventional prepress workflows. Our surveys of in-plants tell us that in-plant operations are finding the latest generation of software tools much easier to work with than in the past. As a result, in-plants are beginning to tackle more complex applications and go after variable data printing more aggressively. A Web-to-print solution is a great complimentary tool for variable data since it gives you agateway into all your home office and field office customers, and helps you take on-demand fulfillment to the next level.
Whatever your interest or need, it's certain worth the trip to Chicago this year!
Gilles Biscos is the founder and president of INTERQUEST, a market research and consulting firm. David Davis is director for INTERQUEST. See www.inter-quest.com.
