There’s a difference between happiness and satisfaction. Óscar Sánchez is brimming with the former, but the president and CEO of Kyocera Document Solutions America (Kyocera) refuses to let any euphoria turn to contentment from a performance standpoint. It’s often said that contentment is a gateway to complacency, and that’s not how a market-leading position is maintained.
Kyocera Document
Solutions America
Still, as he approaches eight full years at the helm of Kyocera, Sánchez has witnessed the fruits of the OEM’s efforts. The corporate trophy case is beginning to buckle under the weight of awards from organizations such as Keypoint Intelligence and The Cannata Report, the latter of which has tabbed Kyocera as the Best A4 manufacturer for eight consecutive years. New A3 and A4 lines were rolled out as was the Kyocera Cloud Capture document capture solution.
Kyocera also managed to evade head-on consequences from last year’s tariffs, and on a more subtle but important note, a new distribution center opened its doors in Pennsylvania. Tack on a wildly successful PRINTING United Expo and a deal with Xerox, and it’s been a memorable year.
Remaining in front of the pack, however, requires not easing off the accelerator. We spoke with Sánchez on the recipe behind Kyocera’s success and his plans to continue pushing the manufacturer to do better.
How did Kyocera perform during the most recent fiscal year? How did expectations compare with results?
Sánchez: Despite the considerable turbulence brought on by tariff-related instability this year, our performance has been strong. We’ve been able to drive revenue growth throughout this fiscal year, and the positive momentum is expected to continue with a strong fourth quarter, positioning us to conclude the year in March with a solid performance both in our channel and direct business.
What stands out as some of the watershed moments for the company over the past 12 months? What resonated the most with you?
Sánchez: Kyocera has had many reasons to celebrate this past year. From winning the 2025–2027 Most Reliable A3 Brand Award and two Buyers Lab (BLI) Pick Awards from Keypoint Intelligence, to securing the No. 1 position for U.S. shipments of cut-sheet production inkjet printers for the fourth consecutive year, to winning the Best A4 Manufacturer from The Cannata Report for the eighth year, I’m proud to say that we’ve received a long list of recognitions of our leadership in the market.
We also introduced our ECOSYS MA2600cwfx Series of A4 color printers and MFPs as well as our EvolutionNext Series of cloud-ready A3 MFPs. On the software side, we launched Kyocera Cloud Capture, our powerful cloud-based document capture solution. We also recently rolled out an important update to DMConnect, which enabled modern authentication and expanded integration for our on-premises capture solution.
On top of all this, we announced our strategic partnership with Xerox, enabling them to distribute our market-leading TASKalfa Pro 15000c, which greatly extends the reach of our inkjet platform. We were particularly pleased to see the positive reaction from the market to this news. It gave our inkjet team good momentum as they headed to PRINTING United, where we showed off a lineup of accessories to extend the capabilities of the TASKalfa Pro 15000c and received a strong response.
While it may not have received as much attention in the market, I also want to highlight the opening of our new distribution center in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. We had to open this state-of-the-art facility because we outgrew our previous eastern distribution centers, and I see this as a great milestone for our company, one that ensures our supply chain and logistics network are reliable for our partners.
How would you grade Kyocera’s handling of the tariff increases? What was the messaging you shared with dealer partners?
Sánchez: Despite the challenges and uncertainties surrounding the tariff landscape, especially early on, I’m pleased with how we were able to prepare for, manage and communicate the situation with our partners. Before the first tariff increases were even announced in 2025, Kyocera had taken proactive measures to move most of our production from China to Vietnam for such a scenario, and this ended up reducing the impact the tariffs had on our business and our partners.
We ensured that our communications with partners throughout this situation were transparent, timely, proactive and comprehensive. The majority of the cost increases resulting from the tariffs were absorbed internally, with only a portion passed on to our dealers. We fully recognize the impact that any price adjustment has on our dealers, particularly in a challenging market environment, which is why we made every effort to limit the increase and remained flexible based on dealer feedback. We consulted with our dealers regarding various options, including whether to reduce support programs to offset a lower price increase or implement higher price adjustments. This approach reflects our commitment to maintaining strong, long-term partnerships and supporting our dealers’ success during periods of uncertainty.
The last 2–3 years have featured a variety of manufacturer partnerships and acquisitions, including Xerox offering Kyocera’s high-speed cutsheet inkjet production presses. How is the manufacturer landscape evolving, and what are your goals in that regard? Do you foresee a right-sizing of OEMs serving the dealer chain?
Sánchez: One of Kyocera’s greatest strengths is our end-to-end approach to the business: We manufacture all the products we sell, and we offer comprehensive first-party support for those products. Our goal is to keep this competitive advantage, because it gives us full control of our roadmap and ensures we don’t depend on others in critical aspects of our business. We can be faster to market with new releases and innovations. While other OEMs are outsourcing their production and R&D, we remain competitive to keep our manufacturing footprint and proudly say that we manufacture all the A3 MFPs, A4 MFPs, printers and production devices in our product line.
Regarding OEM consolidation and right-sizing, it’s evident that, particularly following the pandemic, the market has become significantly smaller. Consequently, there may not be sufficient demand to support the current number of OEMs while remaining competitive across all business segments such as A3, A4, printers or production. Therefore, I anticipate industry consolidation will occur in the coming years; however, this process may extend over several years and could take place later than many have predicted.
Kyocera’s production inkjet technology and the full breadth of partner accessories highlighted PRINTING United last fall. What were you looking to accomplish in Orlando, and what’s been the feedback you received?
Sánchez: We wanted to show customers how much value we can deliver alongside strong technology partners. This allows them to drive automation, produce more applications and further reduce the operating costs of inkjet, which already offers a compelling advantage when you compare it with comparable toner solutions. We also aimed to show off the scalability of inkjet with the announcement of a tandem engine version of the TASKalfa Pro 15000c, which doubles productivity at a lower acquisition cost when compared with our competitors.
We achieved these goals and received positive feedback from our presence at PRINTING United this year. It was yet another strong showing for our inkjet team at the expo, and I see that customers are excited by the new possibilities our new accessory lineup offers. Despite the success our inkjet program has already achieved, we’ve only just scratched the surface of the market opportunity that we see today.
How will you leverage your market leadership positions in production inkjet and A4 to garner increased market share?
Sánchez: As far as inkjet is concerned, we start by continuing to listen to our customers and partners. Even though the TASKalfa Pro 15000c platform has seen remarkable success, our customers and partners challenged us to do more. That’s why we drove the investments we showed off at PRINTING United. We’ll keep listening as we plan for the future.
When it comes to A4, we know we have a great lineup. Our products are very reliable, and dealers love them. However, our market share is still thin compared to its potential, and we have to improve how we position and market these products in a more competitive way.
Kyocera rolled out the new EvolutionNext Series of A3 color and black-and-white models in mid-2025. How do you gauge the market for A3, and what do you feel is the future, particularly with A4’s continued encroachment?
Sánchez: According to the analysts, there continues to be a decrease in the number of units sold on A3 year-over-year, which is especially notable in A3 mono. Kyocera’s A3 market share remains steady, but we’re not happy with that and think there’s potential to gain more share. This is why we’re particularly excited to launch our new A3 mono and color devices in March. These high-end devices, with speeds up to 105 ppm in mono and 80 ppm in color, will enable our dealers to play in a new territory where capabilities such as coated media, large scanning duties and color consistency are critical.
In terms of AI adoption, are you incorporating it into any of your new products or using it internally? Where do you see it potentially making the greatest impact going forward?
Sánchez: AI is a logical fit for many of our hardware and software solutions. As I mentioned earlier, we launched our EvolutionNext Series of A3 MFPs in 2025, and that lineup offers users powerful AI-enabled capabilities such as handwriting enhancement, image-defect prevention, confidential document guard and super resolution. Kyocera Fleet Services (KFS), our print fleet management software, uses AI to predict toner depletion. We’re also piloting predictive maintenance for KFS, which uses machine-learning models to forecast consumable levels and ideal maintenance windows to reduce truck rolls and downtime.
In the future, more of our devices will come equipped with AI to empower our users to do things such as automating secure document workflows and conducting self-diagnoses on the machine. If we’re going to lean into AI, we’ll do it in a way that saves customers meaningful time and lowers the cost of ownership—all without compromising security and trust.
Internally at Kyocera, our teams leverage Microsoft Copilot and Power Automate to build reports, summarize meetings, automate tasks, translate documents and create custom agents for employees to use to complete various tasks. Kyocera also uses AI tools to improve invoice processing by improving the capture of details on those documents.
Is there anything on the horizon from a program or partnership standpoint?
Sánchez: I can share that our inkjet team is focused on the delivery of all the accessories for the TASKalfa Pro 15000c shown at PRINITNG United, as well as the tandem version of this product for double productivity and a new mono-only version that will be launched in April. The team will keep working on expanding the platform, and we’ll be launching new stuff as it becomes available.
On the software side, our cloud-based solutions such as Kyocera Cloud Print and Scan (KCPS), Kyocera Cloud Capture (KCC) and Kyocera Cloud Information Manager (KCIM) continue to get better with quarterly updates. The next version of KCPS will make it easier for users to set up customer licensing, and a coming update for KCIM will improve security specifically for folders and groups. And in the coming months, KCC will have AI-based automated indexing. We’re excited for all these improvements to get rolled out to users and make these solutions even easier for our partners to talk about with prospects and customers.
What will a successful 2026 look like in your estimation? What are some of your goals?
Sánchez: Our objective for the upcoming fiscal year is to continue achieving steady growth. Outperforming the market would indicate that we’re enhancing our market penetration and increasing our placements. With the current shift from A3 to A4 products, we have bold plans to boost our A4 line through innovative programs, which we expect to be a key driver of our growth next year.
