Last month, I wrote in ENX magazine that various hardware manufacturers were reporting that they got off to a slow start in the opening months of 2015. Most Japanese firms reported in May that things slowed in 2015 after having a good run in 2014. Many hardware firms in Japan Read More

Like many businesses in Japan, March 31 is the day the fiscal year ends for most Japanese copier and printer makers and a few weeks later we begin learning how the respective companies did. This year was no different, so in the days just before this magazine went to press, Epson, Read More

Hardware manufacturers based in the United States have been through the wringer. After being pummeled by the Great Recession, Hewlett-Packard, Lexmark, and Xerox—along with many others in the industry—were surprised to find that the hardcopy market stayed soft even after the Read More

Attorneys for a number of hardware manufacturers are ramping up for what appears to be a very busy year. Canon, Hewlett-Packard, and Lexmark all have lawsuits pending in various U.S. federal courts against firms both foreign and domestic. The defendants are alleged to have Read More

While the market for digital imaging hardware and supplies is mature and various segments are declining, most copier companies have been reporting improved revenue for the past couple of years. The majority of copier makers are Japanese companies of course, and they’ve benefited Read More

Over the past year or so, Hewlett-Packard has been fundamentally changing the way it distributes supplies in the United States. Beginning last year, the company implemented steps to move from an open model of supplies acquisition to a program that provides HP with more control Read More

Going into 2014, there was every indication that it would be another busy year for attorneys representing hardware manufacturers. As last year ended, Canon, Epson, HP, Lexmark, and Samsung were pursuing cases in either Europe or in the United States, and some had cases pending in Read More

On September 4, Hewlett-Packard announced a bevy of new security services and solutions at an analyst event in New York City. Branded HP JetAdvantage, the offerings are designed to help customers simplify deploying and monitoring printers and MFPs securely while protecting Read More

Ten years ago, the U.S. supplies industry was in the midst of rapid growth and change. Demand for cheaper, non-OEM cartridges exploded across channels. Retailers including consumer electronics outlets, mass merchants—even pharmacies and grocery stores—devoted more shelf space to Read More

Filing numerous lawsuits in federal court against various third-party supplies manufacturers and resellers in late January, Canon attorneys initiated their latest patent battle in the United States. Canon claims that the firms violated patents on some of Canon a Read More

I’m sure you’ve been hearing for years about this or that new business-class inkjet device that was ready to go toe-to-toe with lasers in the office. For almost twenty years, inkjet folks have been crowing that they’re about to bring to market some new whiz-bang technology that Read More

At the end of March, attorneys for Lexmark International received court rulings that will profoundly impact two of the firm’s most notable lawsuits. On March 25, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Static Control Components, one of the remanufacturing industry’s leading Read More

Well, now that the numbers are in for 2013 and we’re lumbering through the first quarter of 2014, I think it’s safe to say that the recovery—such as it is—has arrived. The market in North America has demonstrated continued improvement over the past couple of years and Europe is Read More

Lawsuits are nothing new to third-party supplies vendors. Companies that remanufacture spent cartridges or reverse-engineer and manufacture new compatible SKUs routinely face lawsuits. I’ve been following the consumables markets since the late 1990s and have written plenty about Read More

The American author and poet Maya Angelou once said, “When you know better, you do better.” Hewlett Packard appears to have taken Dr. Angelou’s words to heart in its ongoing effort to eradicate from the market cartridges that violate its intellectual property. Rather than file a Read More