The ‘00 Decade…a quick reflection & a look ahead
Posted on Thu, Jan 07, 2010
I didn't hear many people shedding tears as they said Good Riddance to 2009 last week. However, when you look back at the past ten years, should we also be happy to say goodbye to the decade?
From a stock market perspective, the 2000's will go down as the worst decade on record in terms of investor returns. Seeing the demise of Nortel, Worldcom, Enron, and the meltdown in the financial markets, I guess it's not that surprising.
In the print world, we've also seen a significant shift in the ‘players'. At the turn of the century, Xerox and Kodak employed almost 40,000 employees in Rochester. Today, that number is just over 15,000. Both of their challenges have been well documented with Kodak selling its copier business (to Danka, subsequently sold to Konica Minolta) and losing much of its dominance in the photographic market. Xerox also given up its Catbird seat to HP, Canon, and Ricoh. In addition, Xerox was forced to restructure and has since outsourced most of its copier & print technologies to partners including Okidata, Samsung, and Fuji.
We have seen HP follow the path of IBM. Both are huge ($100B+) and have become increasing aware of the need to become more service focused. Of the major OEM companies, HP appears to have the lead in migrating to this service model.
So, the decade ahead...what's next for print? Well, Managed Print Services (MPS) has become the new trendy term, with many technology companies painting themselves as service organizations. My belief is we'll see this term last the decade...and may even have it defined before 2020! We'll see continued consolidation in the market, in terms of both acquisitions and hardware partnerships (Xerox-Samsung, HP-Canon, Lexmark-Oki, etc). From a customer perspective, maximizing the efficiency and productivity of their staff will be paramount in the coming ‘jobless recovery'. Therefore, customers will demand a complete managed print program, including software, hardware, realtime asset information, and a solution that maximizes uptime while minimizing capital expenditures.
And, finally - we'll see those Consulting companies (Gartner, Photizo, Lyra) shift their business models to recognize the best print/copy service-based companies...including LaserNetworks. It's the right thing to do for both customers and the industry. Without it, are we destined to repeat our mistakes of the 00's? As of Oct. 18 2001, all 15 analysts tracked by Thomson Financial/First Call rated Enron a "buy"--12 of the 15 called it a "strong buy." Even as late as Nov. 8, the date of Enron's disclosure that nearly five years of earnings would have to be recalculated, 11 of the 15 recommended buying the stock. There were three "holds" and one "strong sell." Enron declared bankruptcy Dec 2, 2001.
Happy New Year!
Brian