Canon broadens its base

Technology Canon, which is primarily active in the imaging sector, showed in Paris what the Group has up its sleeve in the modern
architecture of the Grand Arche exhibition center in Paris presented the
Canon recently presented its vision. This event, called Canon Expo 2005,
The company holds its first annual awards every five years in New York, Paris and finally
in Tokyo is the only platform in which the company participates.
all areas of the company at the same time and talks about his
medium-term strategic orientation. The Japanese
In line with its business divisions, the Group is presenting the current
and updated product portfolio.

The products presented ranged from portable, future-oriented
X-ray equipment from the medical technology sector and
Production facilities for chip production (not reported here)
new screens and color digital printing systems through to new
visionary possibilities in office communication.

Visualization at the center
The Group's most important segment is the various options
for the recording and visualization of images, moving images and the
Handling and output of documents.
While Canon relies on existing technologies in various segments
the company is working on the visualization of content in order to
a completely new process. In a joint project with Toshiba
factory to be built, these two companies want to create a
Competitive technology to plasma and LCD monitors on the market
bring. The monitors equipped with the so-called SED technology
were convincing in comparison to plasma and LCD screens at first glance.
view thanks to a higher contrast range - although this is not a
final or even qualitative assessment.
Such costly development of new technologies cannot and will not be
the Group can apparently afford: CEO Fujio Mitarai, who has left the company
from an immense mountain of debt of more than 6 billion euros so well
as liberated and made it more efficient, the
entry into the monitor market. He explained at the
Opening speech: "By 2010, we want to have a total of 3 million
SED screens. The new business area for Canon will be
another important pillar of our Group." Mitarai sets
The company also focused on ever shorter development cycles. Under his leadership
product development cycles have already been shortened from 18 to 6 months. With
the purchase of a supercomputer for the new building constructed this year.
Tokyo development center, he hopes to achieve a further
Significant shortening of product development.

Entry into professional digital color printing
As already reported in issue 31 of Werbewoche, Canon is planning to
trade fair Ipex in April 2006 a new color digital printing system
to introduce. This has already been shown at the Canon Expo,
even if not yet demonstrated live. Canon is also still holding out with
detailed information. Only a few
(chained) print samples were on display and a few key data on
experienced. According to this, Canon will produce a total of
three product lines onto the market (see box).
The star of the Expo for all those interested in digital printing was the
imagePress X. The printing system will print on papers up to 300 g/m2 and up to
format 33 x 48.3 (A3+). Regardless of the grammage
the system should print up to 70 pages/minute and use a polymer toner
use. The imagePress X is somewhat reminiscent of Kodak's
Digimaster systems, which Canon is known to distribute as an OEM partner.
under the name imageRunner. In contrast to these
150 pages/minute high-speed black and white printing systems, all
imagePress models Canon's own developments.
For the process optimization of print output, Canon presented at Expo 2005
presented a tool that is already available: Print Audit, a
service for analyzing printing costs, helps companies to record
of their printing and copying costs and identifies potential savings. Through
Optimization of document volume and devices are savings
of up to 30 percent are possible. Jens Björnsen, Office Solution Manager
at Canon Switzerland, explains the importance of process optimization in the
digital printing that the printing technology is only one aspect, the
Understanding the processes, including the willingness to change the paths taken in
of the issue is the other, even more important aspect.

Brave new office world
At the Expo, Canon also provided a glimpse into the future of
office world. Will the office concept presented there and apparently already
functional office a reality, intelligent projectors will be the future
change the way we work in office environments. These collect information on
images or text passages that can be marked on the projected surface. The
modern tools also listen to spoken words or react to
commands that are drawn on the projection surface. This is how the
The handling of information can be dramatically simplified once again.
   

Jürgen Franck