By Clive Chan

Canon is no stranger to the world of graphic arts. From scanners, to cameras, to printers, Canon has influence throughout the industry. In the printing world, however, Canon has so far chosen to stick with the consumer and corporate customers. This is about to change as the company makes final preparations to launch a new series of machines geared towards the commercial printer.

Although Canon has vast experience in copiers, its first venture into high production was with the imageRUNNER. Released first in 1999, the series includes networked multifunction devices aimed at the document market, a market strongly held by Xerox. The line took on colour in 2002, but remained document printers instead of graphic machines.

Last September, as part of its celebrations of 50 years of operating in the Americas, Canon held several expositions which spanned the world. In its New York expo, Canon announced a new line that would change its market focus of its digital production machines: the imagePRESS line. According to Canon, the name was chosen to reflect the market segment of the new line, which would be more press than printer. Once again, Canon will face-off against Xerox, this time in the high-end colour arena.

A corporate agenda
Canon’s official corporate philosophy is known as kyosei, or “living and working together for the common good.” Canon’s unofficial corporate philosophy is not necessarily to lead, but to create refined products based on careful market analysis.

“We don’t necessarily watch what our competitors are doing and react to that,” says Janet Cain, director and assistant general manager for Canon’s Production Systems division. “[But] when we come out on the market, we want to come out with something that is better than what is available. Otherwise, we wouldn’t waste our time.”

This rather conservative position means that although it often has to play catch-up to other established firms, it also allows the company to leave the risk to the other players. These two philosophies are not contradictory; indeed they are deeply ingrained in Japanese culture, to which Canon is still governed to extensively worldwide.

While other companies are flamboyant in releasing products to the market, Canon stealthily invests massive amount of its revenues in R&D. Canon is consistently within the top three in the race for the number of U.S. patents awarded. Last year Canon came in second, behind IBM. Unbeknownst to most, Canon holds much of the technology involved in the creation of the laser printer in the early 1990s and has numerous patents in inkjet.

Shifting winds
Previously known only as the imagePRESS X and imagePRESS Y, Canon has finalized the names for this new generation of machine. imagePRESS X, known as the bigger of the two, is now called the C7000VP. imagePRESS Y is now known as the C1 and Canon has cemented the role of the smaller machine to almost exclusively a proofing machine which can take on limited production roles if need be.

Forrest Leighton, product manager for Canon’s Production Systems played a crucial part in the development of imagePRESS. Because press engineering itself was done completely in Japan, Leighton played an interesting role in the development as part of Canon USA.

“Well I didn't turn any screws or wire any boards,” he says. “My key initiative was to look at the commercial print and the production marketplace in the United States and gain an understanding of that market.”
As part of its goals, Leighton says Canon has set a high target for imagePRESS. “The goal with the image quality is that it rivals offset,” he says. “We recognize that offset printing is the core piece of most printers’ business and we’re not, by any means, looking to replace that. What we’re looking to do is to become a nice compliment. The hybrid workflows where you have both digital and offset in the same environment seem to work very well.”

In addition to doing this, Canon decided the price had to be lower than competitive products by a large margin. That way, Canon hopes to attract both the commercial printer as well as its existing corporate clientele looking for more production power.

Powering both machines are new V-Toner, new T-Developer and new E-Drum systems in conjunction with an oil-less fusing system. According to Canon, such system removes the possibility of streaking as the paper is run through the machine. Canon remains tight-lipped with the technical details of how these new systems work but say it was a result of the effort in making the C7000VP run consistently at speeds of 70 pages per minute regardless of the stock (up to 300 gsm).

The C7000VP is aimed for the medium-sized commercial printer. Because this is Canon’s first foray into production-strength digital printing, it has partnered with EFI to provide digital front ends for both imagePRESS models in addition to providing a lower cost Canon-built controller.

“It’s quite significant for us because this is the first time we’ve been able to deliver a controller for this level of device in the market,” says Leighton. “We do see this as an entry-level print offering which will be a nice solution for the corporate reprographic type of environments.”

Employing a robust, third-party digital front end means imagePRESS will be better able to handle the graphical complexities of running variable data campaigns as well as high resolution graphical productions that are more typical to the commercial printer than the corporate environment.
Although the pricing of imagePRESS has yet to be released in North America, Canon of Europe has released prices for its regions. Janet Cane of Canon USA says those prices should be indicative of what the North American market should expect. According to Canon Europe, the imagePRESS C1 will cost $46,000 and the C7000VP will cost $258,000. Final pricing will be made for North America as the company gets closer to the fourth-quarter launch.

“It’s clear that we’re past the early adoption stage when it comes to digital print,” says Leighton. “We’re not always fastest to market, but when we get there, we’re coming on really strong.”