THE NEWS IN PRINT

Experts have begun postmortem with investigations into Lexmark’s Q2 loss. The expenditure chart of Lexmark was compared with that of other major companies and a grand observation was unravelled. The spending on research and development by Lexmark is 10 times lesser than the big enchilada of the printing industry, HP.

Lexmark, which reported second-quarter earnings Tuesday that showed declines in revenue and earnings, blamed much of its recent softness on slow sales of both inkjet printers and inkjet printer supplies. At the same time, rival Hewlett-Packard, Palo Alto, Calif., has been aggressively integrating its proprietary print-head technology into its inkjet devices to increase performance and push pricing down.

R&D is a major weapon in any industry that deals with customers directly. Other brands have been able to bring out technologies that have helped customers dearly by improving the quality of printing, simultaneously reducing the prices of printers, cartridges and accessories. Kodak, a baby in the industry has risen to great heights with its trademark Micro Piezo technology.

Hopefully, this is the wake up call Lexmark needed to fund their researchers to up their ante. Some may say its never too late, but in the printing industry, the earlier the better.

via CRN

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