If the people of Rochester, NY, seem fated always to live in interesting times, it's partly because of wintry precipitation effects from the Great Lake just to their north-and partly because so much depends on conditions at The Flower City's preeminent corporate citizens, Kodak and Xerox.

Leaders and rivals in graphic communications, the companies have given industry-watchers in Rochester plenty to think about as they try to write success into the next chapters of their corporate histories: Kodak as a leaner, more narrowly focused business in the aftermath of a painful Chapter 11 restructuring; and Xerox as an organization making what its CEO has described as an "earth-shattering transformation" to providing business services.

Of course, interest in Kodak and Xerox isn't limited to Rochester, and at Graph Expo, the companies took time to update the industry as a whole on where the executions of their respective strategies stand.

Executives for Kodak continued to pledge an orderly exit from bankruptcy as they promoted new products for printers and hinted at ongoing technical developments in other areas.

The essence of Xerox's message was that graphic markets will not be forgotten while the company refashions itself as a provider of document and data management services.

"As Well As It Can"

Emergence from Chapter 11 is "going as well as it can," according to Kodak CEO Antonio Perez, who said that Kodak expects to announce a formal reorganization plan by the end of the year. Steps toward the goal have included an exit from the consumer inkjet business and the settlement of a long-term liability for retiree health-care benefits. Other initiatives have proven harder to manage, such as a planned patent auction that the company has been obliged to suspend because of a weak response to the offering.

But these difficulties don't appear to have had much bearing on Kodak's interactions with attendees at Graph Expo. "Throughout this year we've maintained open and honest dialogue with our customers and suppliers," said Rich Rindo, vice president of the company's recently formed business unit for graphics, entertainment, and commercial film. As a result, he said, "our discussions with customers at Graph Expo focused primarily on how we are continuing to help them move forward with their businesses."

Kodak aims to do this, said Perez, as a B2B (business to business) focused company with strong differentiation in commercial printing, publishing, and "functional printing" for applications like touchscreens and solar panels. The printer-facing part of Kodak will be the division of graphics, entertainment, and commercial film, representing the activities from which the company expects to derive the bulk of its revenue in 2013.

These include prepress, entertainment imaging, commercial film, and global consumables manufacturing. This structure assures that there will be "no possibility that graphics is going to get lost anywhere" as Kodak reorganizes, said Brad Kruchten, president of the business unit.

"Customers understand that we are fully committed to the commercial print market and to them," affirmed Rindo.

Solutions for production graphics abounded in Kodak's Graph Expo exhibit, which featured a number of new products being shown for the first time in the U.S. Packaging, a keynote of the exhibit, will be particularly bright spot for Kodak going forward, according to Perez. He reported that the company is seeing growth of "100% per year" in flexographic plates and imaging systems for packaging applications.

The Art and Science of Deposition

In 2014, Perez said, Kodak will be ready to introduce "smart packaging" applications that can change the appearance of a package at a touch or present readouts of temperature and other quality-control information. He noted that smart packaging is one of several developmental areas where Kodak can use existing proprietary technologies to enter new markets.

Perez said that Kodak's expertise in deposition technologies-the ability, as he described it, to place imageable materials "on any substrate, at any speed"-will be its ticket to establishing itself as a provider of commercial imaging solutions in many realms, including some beyond conventional print.

Kodak has techniques, for example, that enable it to imprint the kinds of nano-width, electroconductive lines that make it possible for cell phone membranes and energy-converting solar surfaces to function. Perez said that Kodak is working on a deposition process that could lead to a cost-competitive alternative to indium tin oxide (ITO) based screens, widely used in semiconductors and e-devices.

China is the world's largest producer of indium, and its large stockpiles of the metal tend to give that country control over pricing. Because indium tin oxide is transparent, a cell phone screen using a different, non-transparent compound would have to be etched in lines exquisitely fine enough to achieve the same see-through effect.

Perez said that Kodak is prepared to do this with its SquareSpot laser imaging technology, used in the company's CtP systems for commercial print and newspaper platemaking. Roll-to-roll production of screens created in this way is in progress in Rochester for a customer, according to Perez, who also said that Kodak will begin bringing the technology to the general market next year.

Not To Worry

At Graph Expo, Xerox hosted a roundtable session for journalists and analysts that had the same broad intent as the Kodak briefings: to reassure the industry that sweeping corporate change bode no ill for long-standing relationships with print customers.

Ursula M. Burns, CEO, has characterized Xerox's transition to reduced dependence on hard-copy production systems as "earth-shattering" in its implications for the company's future. But, according to Jeff Jacobson, president, Xerox Global Graphic Communications, the strategic shift doesn't signal a pullback from production technology even though Burns has said that the company was "underperforming" in this sector of its business.

Earlier this year, Xerox formed the business group that Jacobson now heads to retool the go-to-market strategy for its portfolio of printing systems, software, and workflow products. He admitted that the company had lost some of its focus in the graphics market "by thinking 'production' when we should have been talking about 'commercial print.'"

Momentum will be regained by a 125-strong sales force that will concentrate on growing business with the industry's 400 largest firms, said Steve Butler, senior vice president of the Graphic Communications Business Group. The sales force also will work on convincing advertising agencies and other job specifiers to ask for output from Xerox equipment when they buy printing services, Butler said.

"Real B2" Means Inkjet

Jacobson and his team will focus on bringing new products to market as well, especially presses in commercial formats. Jacobson said that although the group wants to be able to offer "a real B2" (23" x 29") production press, it may not be possible to build one around the electrophotographic technology that Xerox uses in its iGen digital color production systems.

That would mean making a developmental push into B2 inkjet, and in this endeavor, Jacobson declared, "we're prepared to make the appropriate investment to be number one." The challenge, he said, will be to achieve the same market-leading share in inkjet that Xerox possesses in toner-based printing.

Xerox has entered the inkjet arena with the CiPpress, a letter-sized, waterless inkjet printer that it unveiled in the U.S. at Graph Expo 2011. Jacobson said, however, that the company had more work to do in developing aqueous inkjet systems. He also acknowledged the presence in the commercial space of "disruptive technologies" (code words at Graph Expo for Landa Corporation's nanographic printing systems).

But in Jacobson's opinion, no single vendor holds sway in production inkjet, and it is far too soon to place bets on which manufacturer will emerge as the market leader. The technology and its applications are just getting started "in the top of the first inning of an 18-inning game," he said.