Funai Japan Launches New Inkjet Printer with up to 50% Savings on Ink

Funai Electric, the worldwide licensee for Kodak Consumer and SOHO Inkjet Printers, announced it is launching its first Kodak-branded product. Funai has a long history of manufacturing inkjet and laser printers for a number of brands around the world. They have built more than 130 million inkjet printers over the last 16 years. According to Kiyoshi Chinzei, Funai Electric’s General Manager, Office Solutions, the KODAK Verité 55 is the first in a line of new and innovative printing products from the company.

Product Features

According to Funai, the new inkjet printer provides end-users with up to 50% savings on their printing costs with standard large capacity (XL) color and black cartridges that doubles the print yield. The XL cartridges will print 360 color pages and 400 black pages.  Funai is offering $50 worth of large capacity ink cartridges included in the box compared to standard size ink cartridges from other leading manufacturer’s printers priced below $100.

The printer has built-in wireless connectivity for printing, scanning and copying.  Users can scan or print from a smartphone or tablet in a single swipe using Flick Print with the Kodak Verite Printer App, available for Apple and Android devices.  It also features wireless direct and local Wi-Fi connectivity to enable wireless printing from mobile devises through Kodak’s Verite Printer App with support for Apple AirPrint and Google CloudPrint.  The new printer has a recommended duty cycle of 1,000 pages and print up to 10ppm in monochrome and 4.2ppm in color with a draft print speed of 20ppm and 15ppm respectively.  Scanning to multiple file formats is available from Windows, MAC and Mobile Apps.  According to Funai, the printers, will be available in North America initially through Wal-Mart stores then Tesco in the U.K. later this year.  The Kodak Verite 55 All-in-One Inkjet Printer has a suggested retail price of $79.47.

InfoTrends’ Opinion

In 2012, Kodak announced that it was exiting the consumer printer business part of its bankruptcy reorganization decision.  This past February, Funai entered into a licensing agreement with Eastman Kodak Co. to sell Kodak-branded printers, the Verite 55 All-in-One Inkjet printer is the first official product related to this agreement.  In addition, to the Kodak acquisition, Funai also acquired Lexmark’s inkjet printer division a few year ago and operates a former Lexmark product center in Kentucky.  InfoTrends wrote about Funai a few years back and their history of investing in already proven technologies, (http://www.infotrends.com/content/CDP/CDPE/Analysis/2013/13anNewVendors0711.pdf) and, it would seem that our previous assumptions were correct.

With this recent announcement, it is clear that Funai is leveraging the brand recognition of Kodak worldwide and the patent and technology offering of both Lexmark and Kodak.  This product is clearly targeted at the consumer market with retail distribution. While North America is a mature market for Segment 1 (Consumer Inkjet) shipments, there is opportunity for growth within the emerging markets.  According to Funai, future products will be launched  in a handful of channels and geographies moving forward.  The inkjet market is dominated by market leaders; HP, Canon, Epson and Brother. It  is an interesting strategy for a new OEM to venture into however, with the brand recognition of Kodak and the 50% ink savings announcement there is room for a potential newcomer.