This Month's Spectrum Summary:

(The following is an excerpt from the November 2006 issue of Spectrum, a proprietary monthly briefing published exclusively for the clients of I.T. Strategies, Inc. © 2006)

Time to Dive to View the Wonders Beneath the Surface of our International Industrial Inkjet World

This month we sit down to talk with I.T. Strategies consultant Marco Boer about the opportunities and challenges found in today's increasingly internationalized world of industrial inkjet. Although now smaller than today's $23B consumer inkjet world, the industrial segment at $4.2B is growing quite a bit faster. Opportunities are where there's the fastest growth.

Unlike the consumer segment, industrial inkjet is much more fragmented geographically. Inkjet heads continue to be developed by a small set of companies, but are now increasingly used by a great variety of integrators around the world. Among the problems this presents are providing support to customers scattered around the world due to the distance and language barriers. There is the perception that small integrators may come and go. But in reality there is so much interest that applications continue to multiply, in part because integrators know the needs of their own country best.

At the recent IMI Europe Inkjet Printing Conference, there were a number of speakers from companies that form a supporting layer beneath the integrators.

-Tecan, a U.K. based company, provides precision parts for micromechanical applications including laser-cut nozzle plates for inkjet heads.

-ixPressia Division of Cametrics Ltd. provides off the shelf print engine software drivers and other components that allows integrators to short-cut development time.

-PerfectaJet Ltd. in Israel has developed what looks like significant water absorbing media coatings. Their chemically-reactive ink/media combinations maximize image quality for inkjet CTP and other applications.

-Cemitec in Spain is a multidisciplinary research center that uses inkjet for precision coating food packaging with controlled release compounds designed to extend shelf life of perishable foods.

Offerings such as these are enabling modularization of inkjet applications, compressing time to market cycles and accelerating the proliferation of integrators around the world. This trend is also enabled by the power of the Internet. Among the hurdles presented in this fragmenting market are language, regulatory issues, support logistics, and cultural differences. Addressing language, there are websites like the one named Babelfish (www.babelfish.com) that offer translation free of charge. Almost any language can be handled, but translations can be quite rudimentary.

The fragmenting, modularized, subsurface industrial inkjet world, unlike consumer inkjet, is quite early in its market life cycle. A small integrator overnight can become an international company, and it doesn't matter so much where in the world a product is made. This means faster growth and the potential for significantly better margins.