Kodak Ends Inkjet Printer Sales, Continues to Sell Ink

Kodak recently announced that it was discontinuing the sales of its inkjet printers, which left many customers worried that the company may discontinue the sale of the ink for these printers as well. Many people bought inkjet printers from Kodak for one simple reason, that being the fact that the ink for these printers was pretty cheap in comparison to others. The good news is that even though the company won't sell any more inkjet printers, it will still continue to sell the ink to customers who have these printers.

Krista Gleason, spokeswoman for Kodak, recently stressed, "Kodak will continue to sell ink to its customers, honor all product warranties, and provide technical support and service. Customer service remains a priority." However, that raises the question of how long this will go on. According to Gleason, "The expected lifetime of the printers," which is three to four years based on industry average.

Kodak added that it anticipates supporting inkjet sales beyond that, as long as consumer demand remains strong. The same thing was said last month when Lexmark announced that it was exiting the inkjet printer business. Even though both companies get some credit for not leaving customers high and dry, this isn't all about customer service.

The real profit for printer and copier companies comes from ink and toner sales. This announcement from Kodak clearly stated that it would continue to sell the ink in an effort to crawl out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. "Kodak has continued to manage its Consumer Inkjet business for profitability, and starting in 2013, it will focus that business on the sale of ink to its installed base," the company said.

Kodak's printers have been considered slower than most of the other ones on the market. Even though picture quality on Kodak devices was very good, other features and capabilities seemed underwhelming for office use. To make things worse, Kodak put these devices up against a ton of new and better devices from companies like Brother, Canon, Epson and HP. Aside from printing photos, Kodak's printers weren't fast enough to be of any real use in an office setting.

IDC's Keith Kmetz stated, "Kodak's market share never achieved the levels the company hoped for, and Kodak's financial struggles made the company's consumer inkjet effort very difficult." These problems sound a lot like the ones faced by Lexmark, where both companies wanted to sell ink and toner for printers and copiers that were mediocre and best.

Source: PCWorld - Kodak printers are gone, but the ink sells on

Kodak Steps Away from the Printer Industry

After only recently putting hundreds of millions of dollars into creating a new line of business in desktop inkjet printers, Kodak has already decided to scrap the project. The company announced recently that it is planning to shift its focus in 2013 from ink sales to printers it has sold, which is the most profitable part of that particular business. The company also announced that it would stop selling printers, an area where competition is leaving little room for Kodak.

The news only gets worse from there as the company also announced that it would be asking Federal bankruptcy court for more time to put together a Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization plan. Plans like this would spell out how a reorganized company will operate after bankruptcy and the steps that company will take in order to make creditors as whole as possible.

Kodak has made a plethora of big changes ever since filing for bankruptcy back in January in attempts to raise money and cut costs. These measures have included shutting down its digital camera business and selling its online Kodak Gallery operations. Kodak currently has a few other businesses that are also up for sale, including document scanners and still camera film.

Kodak has talked about profits in desktop inkjet printers for a while now, with the company stating that the main profits are found in consumables like the ink itself. According to a recent statement from the company, getting out of the printer business "will significantly improve cash flow in the U.S. beginning in the first half of 2013."

Source: USA Today - Kodak quits printers, wants new deadline

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Kodak Truper Series

Kodak may not be one of the biggest names in office printing solutions but they continue to innovate the low-volume production scanning solutions by helping businesses achieve high levels of productivity as well as image quality needed for digitizing paper records. The new Truper Series of scanners from Kodak.

Built on the platform used for the Truper 3200 and 3210, these new models offer increased throughput as well as some nice enhancements. The 3610 model brings in some really nice power packed into a compact, rotary-only scanner whereas the 3210 model has an automatic document feeder and a flatbed that allows the scanning of fragile or bound pages.

According to Tony Barbeau, General Manager of Document Imaging for Kodak's Business Solutions and Services group, "The introduction of the enhanced Kodak Truper Series Scanners represents exciting new gains in the low-volume production scanning space. Mid-to-large sized organizations are often challenged with capturing a more diverse range of documents, to meet specific business needs. A large, specialized department like payroll might receive new paper-based information on a daily, or even hourly, basis and requires fast, accurate digitization to keep the overall business running efficiently. The Truper Series Scanners provide a valuable solution that expedites and streamlines these processes."

The Truper Series Scanners can scan up to 90 pages per minute in color and grayscale as well as up to 180 pages per minute in black-and-white with a daily duty cycle of 15,000 pages. The Truper Series Scanners have a number of image processing enhancements that allows businesses to easily maintain greater integrity of data with the crisp, clean images that are captured without having to compromise valuable time. The Truper Series Scanners also has an ADF with independently selectable guides capable of holding 200 pages and able to scan images up to 11.9-inches by 100-inches in size. When in long document mode, the Truper Series can capture forms and records of unlimited length which includes documents like EKGs, oil well logs or fetal monitor strips. The switchblade background bar in the Truper Series also allows optimal flexibility for the ability to support optional document types as well.

Rescanning is not needed with the Truper Series due to the device's ultrasonic multi-feed detection which catches any double feeds automatically. Another feature on the Truper Series is Multi-feed ignore technology. This allows the user to adjust settings for envelopes or documents that contain attached sticky notes, photos, etc... so they can pass through the scanner without stopping. This is a great way to reduce rescans as well as document preparation time. The Truper Series has an exceptional level of image quality. This helps businesses gain greater accuracy in their scanned information.

High quality images are captured at up to 600 dpi and if you add that to the Advanced Color Dropout Technology you allow users to simultaneously remove as many as six custom colors in any multicolor document for optimal OCR, ICR or barcode recognition. The Truper Series is also packaged with KOFAX VRS 4.5 Professional image enhancement software which delivers clean, crisp images. The Truper Series also comes with features like Auto Color Detect, Blank Page Deletion and Auto Orientation which reduces prep time as well as operator intervention.

The Truper Series Scanners has minimum maintenance requirements due to long-life bulbs and user-replaceable rollers. You can purchase The Kodak Truper 3610 for around $6,995 and the Kodak Truper 3210 for around $8,495.

Source: Office Product News

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