The study has evaluated and compared both the current capabilities of the key vendors and their future strategies to meet expected customer requirements for high-speed inkjet production presses. Noting that “Canon has strengthened its position in its core markets of transaction and corporate/large enterprise print while expanding out into the graphics and commercial printer space…”, the report also references Canon’s objective of wanting to be the “pathway to digital” for the still largely untapped analog/offset market.

With inkjet expanding downstream – what IDC refers to as “the democratization of inkjet” – as well as upstream as the market matures, the IDC MarketScape report identifies Canon’s key strengths as:

• The portfolio of its continuous feed and sheet fed products, its “excellent” PRISMA workflow software, and its growing range of inks, stocks and media to “address the needs of a large spectrum of customers” and to produce “a myriad of applications”
• A “strong” direct sales force and service organisation worldwide, together with colour and application specialists “to help build its capabilities as a consultative sales organisation”. The relationship that customers have with their account managers is also cited as one of the main reasons for doing business with Canon
• Canon “actively” helps its customers increase their print volumes and runs initiatives to support moving more applications and jobs to their inkjet presses
• 1,000 production print service technicians, with over 600 of them specialising in high-speed inkjet
• Manufacturing innovation fuelled by a substantial investment in R&D, with “a more direct line from R&D to customers allowing for a more customer-focused approach and quicker reaction time”
• Customer events/training held at manufacturing sites such as Boca Raton, Poing, and Venlo.

“Based on our understanding of the most pressing business performance issues for our customers,” says Christian Unterberger, Chief Marketing Officer & Executive Vice President, Canon Production Printing, “Canon’s inkjet R&D teams have focused mainly on four areas: optimising productivity, maximising print quality, expanding applications versatility and reducing total cost of ownership. By delivering outstanding output quality and enabling customers to work with the broadest range of media, they can produce the fullest range of applications for their customers. This means they can transition higher volumes of work from inefficient legacy production devices. In turn, they can also take full advantage of the improved productivity that comes with each generation of digital inkjet technology – not just by virtue of faster printing speeds, but by eliminating inefficient practices and streamlining end-to-end workflows. Together, these advantages have powerful potential to bring running costs down, stimulate growth and accelerate return on investment.”

About IDC MarketScape: IDC MarketScape vendor assessment model is designed to provide an overview of the competitive fitness of ICT (information and communications technology) suppliers in a given market. The research methodology utilizes a rigorous scoring methodology based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria that results in a single graphical illustration of each vendor’s position within a given market. IDC MarketScape provides a clear framework in which the product and service offerings, capabilities and strategies, and current and future market success factors of IT and telecommunications vendors can be meaningfully compared. The framework also provides technology buyers with a 360-degree assessment of the strengths and weaknesses of current and prospective vendors.

The excerpt of the IDC MarketScape study that relates to Canon can be viewed and downloaded via: https://canon.sm/idc-whitepaper