IPEX 2010 Blogs - Simon Enticknap Number 3
The opening day of the show saw the digital press manufacturers all jump in at once like noisy schoolboys jostling for position.
Kodak, Xerox, HP, Screen and Ricoh all gave presentations and product launches, and as usual there was a plethora of enhancements, upgrades and new ‘technologies’ left, right and centre, as well as some genuinely new gear on display.
Perhaps the most significant, in terms of completely new press technology that can actually be bought and installed (soon) and used to make money (hopefully), are Kodak’s Prosper press and the Screen Truepress JetSX.
These two machines – one a high-speed continuous feed press running at 200 metres per minute, the other a B2 sheet perfecting machine producing 1,620 sheets per hour - highlight the wide divergence in the digital market as it develops and why it is no longer possible to regard ‘digital’ as a single homogenous entity that exists alongside other print processes. Digital is now as varied and many hued as gob-stoppers in a lolly shop.
It’s getting harder to talk about ‘digital’ as singular force but rather, increasingly, as a series of overlapping, often competing, technologies that are aggressively attacking everything that involves print – including each other’s products – as the systems continue to multiply like viruses.
Statistics tell the story
Press conferences by digital manufacturers inevitably result in an avalanche of statistics and grandiose claims, few of which are backed up with any concrete, independent reference points. During the course of Day 1, I heard four separate digital manufacturers claim that they are the ‘market leaders’ – hey boys, you can’t all be first, just get in line now and settle down.
In the schoolroom of digital printers, Kodak is the fat kid that slimmed down and got a lot smarter, Ricoh is the quiet achiever, diligently working away in the corner on its homework, Xerox is the head boy who’s now getting a bit of lip from some of the youngsters, Screen is the clever, rather oddball one, and HP is the big kid used to getting its own way by sheer brute force.
Apart from the big-noting (no surprise here that HP are the biggest of the big noters, simply claiming that they are now the biggest IT company in the world and the biggest printing company), there is also plenty of shouting about how big the digital print market is, how fast it’s growing and when, inevitably, it will overtake offset printing as the dominant player.
It’s enough to make ‘Sir’ lose his temper - and makes George Clarke’s frustration at the Heidelberg press conference all the more understandable – because when it comes to the ‘truth’ of statistics, you simply can’t believe what those naughty digital manufacturers are telling you.
Mind you, offset suppliers are not above a bit of ‘creative’ use of numbers when it suits them. Take the claim by Heidelberg CEO, Bernhard Schreier, in his opening address when talking about the large format market:
“Since we entered the market in 2008, our market share for large format has already reached around 30 percent – and it continues to grow.”
Sounds impressive doesn’t it, 30 per cent of the large format market, particularly as the XL 145 and 162 were only launched two years ago at drupa. However, as Schreier confirmed himself in conversation with yours truly yesterday, what this really refers to is 30 per cent of all new installations in the large format market since drupa – and there haven’t been too many of those round our way in recent times.
Schreier also pointed out that, when it comes to choosing a digital print partner, observers shouldn’t pay too much attention to the fact that Heidelberg already has workflow arrangements with several digital manufacturers including Canon, HP, Xerox and Kodak; the digital partner - or indeed partners, depending on the market fit – may yet come from outside this group.
I’ll have more on this interview when I find some time and a quiet corner in which to cogitate.
Honest Benny Landa
It took Benny Landa speaking at the HP press conference – an appearance that has now become something of a fixture for HP, a talismanic figure wheeled out to add some class and kudos to the occasion – to bring a bit of honesty to the debate, apologising for the fact that he was wrong when he predicted, back at Ipex 1983 when the Indigo made its first cataclysmic impact on the industry, that by 2010 all printing would be digital.
Well, that was obviously just a tad optimistic and one hopes that not too many gullible souls were taken in by such hyperbole back then – just as they shouldn’t now.
Of course, just because Landa was wrong in 1983 doesn’t mean that he resiles from such ‘visionary’ statements and the belief that, one day, all print will indeed be digital.
“No-one doubts the inevitability of that coming to pass,” he said yesterday.
No-one except perhaps the majority of the industry which is still using offset, flexo, screen etc and seems, rather perversely from the point of view of the digital boys, to prefer it that way.