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February 21, 2012
[February 21, 2012] If there was an overriding theme at the 2012 Lyra MPS Forum, it was the search for new customers beyond the big corporations that have long embraced managed print services (MPS) enthusiastically. The most-discussed new MPS market is small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB), which are too small to be addressed by the direct sales forces that have sold MPS to bigger enterprises and thus must be addressed through a dealer network. But vendors are looking to move upscale as well, offering global MPS contracts that cover every office of large worldwide corporations. Going in either direction confronts a vendor with new challenges.
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February 14, 2012
[February 14, 2012] The annual Lyra Imaging Symposium kicked off with preliminary activities on Monday, January 23, for the 15th straight year at the Rancho Las Palmas Resort in Rancho Mirage, California. The 2012 Lyra Imaging Symposium theme was “Profiting from Transformative Technologies and Trends” and offered an overall look at the printing and imaging business—hardware, supplies, and services—and the industry’s players, while highlighting high-performing, promising, or at least interesting developing market areas.
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February 7, 2012
[February 7, 2012] After all is said and done, the bottom line for imaging supplies companies is how the past year’s trends impacted their bottom line, and with few exceptions, the executives we spoke with were pleased with their respective firm’s performance—and that of the entire imaging supplies market—in 2011. Yet, with consumables supplying the critical component of the industry’s razor-and-blades business model, all participants in this component of the printing and imaging industry can ill afford to sit back and let events unfold.
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January 31, 2012
[January 31, 2012] In 2011, the imaging industry was abuzz with talk about page volumes and the myriad trends influencing how and where digital pages are being printed. With the same factors—the economy and mobile devices to name the top two—pulling different levers depending on the market segment, the aqueous ink market provides an interesting opportunity to see the big picture. After all, aqueous ink is used in desktop, wide-format, and continuous-feed commercial ink jet machines, spanning a number of market and customer segments.
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January 24, 2012
[January 24, 2012] By now, no one, least of all paper industry managers, are surprised that the overall market for paper is in decline. In every direction, electronic alternatives to paper are proliferating. If there is a silver lining on this cloud, niche markets within the paper industry are still growing.
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January 17, 2012
[January 17, 2012] Last year, we heard a lot from printer OEMs and remanufacturers about adjusting to the “new normal” brought about by the increased use of electronic documents and managed print services (MPS), renewed environmental awareness, and, of course, the down economy. While a number of factors continue to shape the overall imaging supplies market, worldwide unit shipments of toner cartridges/containers and bulk toner grew in 2011, thanks to a healthy increase in the use of color toner.
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