For Position Only: Xerox Plays Catch Up
My husband and I were wondering the other day whether or not “Xerox” — either the brand or the informal verb — would be part of our 3-year-old daughter’s lexicon when she grows up. Unfortunately, I suspect not.
By now most of us know the saga of Xerox PARC, the esteemed research center in Palo Alto, California, where the personal computer was invented but never commercialized in the 1970s: It was IBM, not Xerox PARC, that saw the commercial value in the PC and went on to create an industry. Imagine how the world might be different today (or in 25 years from now), were it the “Xerox PC” rather than the IBM PC that heralded the microcomputer revolution; if it were Xerox instead of Apple that cashed in on the graphical user interface.
But those events didn’t happen, and in the 1990s, Xerox somehow managed to miss out on an equally exciting technological revolution: desktop publishing. The company is suffering terribly as a result: Its stock is under $10 a share these days. Xerox lost $384 million in 2000 and faces substantial debt, and speculation is rampant about whether the 45-year-old company will go bankrupt, be bought or be sold in pieces, or pull itself back to profitability by the bootstraps.
I wouldn’t venture to guess, but last week’s On Demand Digital Printing & Publishing show in New York did confirm one thing for this industry watcher: Xerox will never live up to the potential it once had — to become the preeminent manufacturer of digital printing devices for publishers, whether of the color or black-and-white, continuous- or sheet-fed, desktop or short-run varieties.
Timing Is the Problem
While On Demand offered little in the way of earth-shattering news, all of the usual on-demand suspects turned out to talk about what they do and how they do it (better than their competitors, of course), and about the promising future of digital printing. Xerox was in the thick of things: It demo’d its new DocuColor 12 Laser Printer, which produces 600-by-600 color pages at 12.5 ppm, driven by an Electronics for Imaging (EFI) RIP or by server software that lets the printer produce Matchprint-quality proofs; it hyped its three new DocuColor direct-imaging presses; and it touted its enhanced DigiPath workflow and VIPP variable-data software, which allow print-on-demand document management and XML-based personalization, respectively.
These are all undoubtedly well-engineered technologies, but the fact is, they’re too little too late. Xerox has been so busy clutching tightly to the office printing market that it simply can’t compete in the graphic-arts industry, which is where the company believes the growth will be in the next five to ten years. According to Xerox, office printing will grow 1 percent annually, from $41 to $43 billion between 1999 and 2003; SoHo printing will grow 3 percent, from $41 to $46 billion; but production printing will grow 18 percent, from $49 billion to a whopping $96 billion. It’s no wonder Xerox now has all eyes on the graphic-arts industry, where the company currently has only a one-percent market share despite its purchase of Tektronix’ color-printer business.
But think about it. How many graphic designers or prepress shops are going to spend tens of thousands of dollars for toner-based “Matchprint quality”? If they want a digital contract proof, devices ranging from EFI-driven Canon CLCs and Ricoh Aficios to Kodak Approvals to Iris inkjets have been doing the job for years, in both corporate and prepress environments. If designers want comps, which is really what the DocuColor 12 is supposed to produce, Epson inkjets are perfectly suitable, as are any number of other desktop inkjets and dye-subs. If and when a desktop color laser printer is desired, HP will likely spring to mind among graphics professionals a good bit before Xerox.
As for direct imaging and other short-run presses, Xerox plays second (or should I say fourth?) fiddle to Heidelberg, Xeikon, and Indigo. All of these manufacturers have been selling such presses since the mid 1990s, making slow, steady in-roads among commercial printers and helping them build up niche businesses in short-run printing from, essentially, air. Now, suddenly, there’s a lot of buzz about Xerox’s forthcoming “FutureColor” press, a 100-ppm digital color press announced at last year’s Drupa show but not scheduled for release until 2002. Although Xerox says the FutureColor will be revolutionary in its capabilities — mixing paper stocks, producing fully assembled process-color publications, and rivaling offset lithography in terms of quality — the FutureColor will compete with the Heidelberg/Kodak NexPress, a 70-ppm direct-imaging (DI) press that is expected six months sooner from a company (or rather, a partnership) that has a proven track record with direct-imaging technology and a positive reputation among commercial printers.
Getting Moving
While Xerox plays catch up with Heidelberg and others, it will probably miss out on the next trend poised to affect publishing and printing: mobile communications. Just as the Web changed what and how we publish and print, so too will handheld communication devices in the next decade. The widening pipeline for sending data through cyberspace and the proliferation of Web-enabled PDAs, cell phones, and other appliances will drive our need to print from mobile applications. Lots of graphics arts technologies companies know this — including Adobe and HP — and they’re working on the content creation, networking, and printing technologies to serve that world. Xerox is still stuck on 20th century technology.
That’s why I doubt Xerox will be part of my daughter’s vocabulary 20 years from now. The sad fact is that although the company makes great printers — fast, flexible devices that render clear, sharp output — it has viewed the world through this lens it calls documents. In the process it has failed to see the greater world of publishing, and to serve those publishers adequately. One might think a company that had the vision to see the microcomputer on every desktop, even if it failed to capitalize on that vision, would learn from its past mistakes — especially if that company had as much R&D resources as any could hope. In the case of Xerox, unfortunately, one would seemingly be wrong.
Mind you, I’m not predicting the certain demise of Xerox. Without a doubt, the venerable company has the resources to refocus itself, and possibly even to introduce another new word or two into our collective vocabulary. It will be interesting to see if the company can find a path back to its former glory.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on March 8, 2001
Commenting is easier and faster when you're logged in!
