You can see it’s show time again by all the new product announcements taking place. This time it’s IPEX in the UK—a major event for the UK, Northern European, African and the Far Eastern markets. It appears that this IPEX will herald a change in the digital printing market as a number of major players in the office level of digital printing move forward to challenge in the production color area of the graphic arts market.

IPEX will herald a change in the digital printing market as major players in office-level digital printing challenge in the production color area. Production color up to now has been led by Xerox, but at IPEX, it will all change.

This is an area of the market that up to now has been led by Xerox, but where HP Indigo, Kodak NexPress and Xeikon also have serious market shares. Canon also is a key player in this market but mainly selling products more suited to the office than offset quality commercial printing. At IPEX it will all change and Xerox in particular will feel real competition in its core area of 60-plus pages/minute (ppm) presses. I know all the players mentioned above operate in this space, but in the past few years Xerox has dominated this market first with its DocuColor 2060, then with the DocuColor 6060, 7000 and 8000, and of course with its top of the market iGen3.