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Monday, March 9th, the entire global trade media was invited to an exciting virtual press-conference by HP. The presentation was 'virtual' due to the restrictions in travel that the coronavirus causes. HP's Alon Bar-Shany presented the new range of Indigo's in his usual casual way, pointing to the details, so the participants right away understand what HP wants the public to be focusing at.

Let me start pointing at the products presented at the conference. HP is launching a range of new great Indigo's, but what's more important they are broadening the product-range to even more printers. I believe I once heard that HP has an Indigo for every segment in the market, and yes, the new range of printers extended the reach. From the smallest 7K eco (which I believe is more short for economic than ecologic) and delivers an A3+ size CMYK solution to the largest and fastest of the B2 Indigos the new Indigo 100K, which even "sounds like a printing press."

I could, of course, choose to write about the products presented, and yes, they were indeed great, but I would like to speculate over these machines for which market space they are intended. No question that HP has been able to place themselves as a market leader in digital print. Bar-Shany even presented the number of presses in the market to be 1,000 machines with annual revenue of $15 billion, which of course is truly great, and I know for a fact that Indigo owners are happy owners. Where the first generations of Indigo's had some child-diseases, the latest versions seem to be robust, and happy owners are satisfied because they bank on their investment, with reliable machines, and a quality that is superior to most other brands. One of the things that Bar-Shany announced was new inks, even higher quality of the Indigo's, plus yet FM screening on all the latest models. (As far as I recall.)

An Indigo for every type of printer is an excellent idea since every Indigo has a 'direct' upgrade path for the next version. Most of the machines are even upgradeable to the latest version securing the investments, and this is maybe the key, to why the Indigo range is exciting. With the entry-level Indigo machine, HP target other toner-based printers in the segment. I take the 7K Eco competes on specs and price. However, I believe HP has concluded that the quality of the Indigo, is impossible to step down from when first installed. So addressing the "lower" segment market is feeding new business opportunities in the future. The machines that are now branded "K" (for thousands) add value to excising Indigo customers, and of course, also for the customers able to have a higher entry-point in the value chain. Thicker substrates, and even higher quality, differentiate the Indigos from the competitors - could be Fujifilm 750S, for example? If the customers have the volume that fits the full range of possible applications, these machines are merely excellent.

The newest and so far fastest B2 Indigo is the HP Indigo 100K. It looks fantastic, and though I, of course, haven't seen it for real, I am sure that it is a work-horse that is aimed to take on the competition, with... Well, one can say offset print, another could say Inkjet, and I would like to say, Nanography. No question that Landa has pushed the development of almost every vendor. With a potentially postponed drupa 2020, it's a kind of 'nemesis' for Landa not being able to show the models that actually ship. But, of course, drupa is still "on" for June 16th 2020, so maybe we will be able to see these two machines competing, side by side.

The HP Indigo range, therefore, competes with the toner-based printers from Xerox, Ricoh, Konica-Minolta, etc. to the I300, KM-1, JetPress, TruePresses, and maybe even the smallest of the T-series printers. Of course, the choice of printer and model depends on volume, applications, and perhaps even opportunities that we don't know yet.

When I saw the range of printers presented, and I have not even written about the label-editions, and the folding-carton editions of the Indigos HP delivers the maybe most complete range of digital printers in the entire market. That is great, and you can ask yourself whether this is "just" an analysis of the market and opportunities, or whether this is ALSO a way for HP to show-off. Xerox is still trying to convince HP shareholders that a combined Xerox-HP is any good?

Shareholders of HP that look into the printing part of the HP-business could maybe be convinced that the $33 billion company is better of being independent, rather than being combined with Xerox? Of course, HP produces way more products than only printers, but it's well-known that HP printers are the more profitable part of HP.

Regardless, HP's slogan for drupa is 'Creating the future. Again' is bold, ambitious, and I believe convincing. I have always liked the Indigo printers; however, I also think that inkjet machines like, i.e. the Fujifilm 750S, clearly show that print technology whether it's Inkjet or based on electro ink will fight over a slashing market in the future.

And oh. I forgot one crucial detail from the presentation. Bar-Shany showed a graph with a decreasing curve representing the numbers of US Commercial printing shipments as a % of the GDP. Used to indicate that commercial printing is declining is maybe the objective. However, I am not sure that a graph like this is really representative for the development of commercial print, but that is, of course, another discussion but an important one. I couldn't help mentioning this since Heidelbergs CEO Rainer Hundsdörfer at the Online Print Symposium in Munich last week told that the global print market is pretty stable. He assessed that the global print market is around $400 billion. This led to a discussion with my good friend Andreas Weber, since Bernd Zipper in a previous presentation claimed the market to be considerably larger. Without knowing the exact size of a market, it's merely impossible to talk about how markets are developing. I believe we will have to find measures and means that can clarify these statements in the future, also to ensure that printers have as accurate data as possible.

Congratulations to HP. Looking good.

One More Thing: V12 - take a look at it here!

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