The study has evaluated and compared both the current skills of the key vendors and their future strategies to meet predicted client requirements for high-speed inkjet production presses. Noting that Canon has reinforced its role in its core markets of transaction and corporate/large enterprise print while expanding out into the graphics and commercial printer space, the document additionally references Canons goal of trying 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 Canons key strengths as:

The portfolio of its non-stop feed and sheet fed products, its excellent PRISMA workflow software, and its developing range of inks, stocks and media to address the desires of a massive spectrum of customers and to produce a myriad of applications.

A strong direct sales force and service organisation worldwide, together with colour and application experts to assist construct its skills as a consultative sales organisation. The relationship that clients have with their account managers is additionally mentioned as one of the major motives for doing business with Canon.

Canon actively helps its clients 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 with four trained experts in the Middle East region where more than 150 million A4 impressions have been produced in the previous year.

Manufacturing innovation fuelled by a significant investment in R&D, with a more direct line from R&D to clients allowing for a more customer-focused method and faster reaction time
Customer events/training held at manufacturing sites such as Boca Raton, Poing, and Venlo.

A localized version of the Future Book Forum was rolled out whereby Canon Middle East held an in-depth workshop with 50 publishers to look at the challenges being faced by the industry and exploring book printing on demand as a catalyst for growth.

Canon Middle East, as part of its strategic pillar Education for Life is aiding educational institutions with their publication requirements with an inkjet associated solution.

Based on our understanding of the most pressing business performance problems for our customers, says Ayman Aly, Senior Marketing Manager at Canon Middle East, Canons inkjet R& teams have targeted primarily on four areas: optimising productivity, maximising print quality, expanding applications versatility and decreasing total cost of ownership. By delivering excellent output quality and enabling our Middle East clients 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 take full advantage of the elevated productivity that comes with each generation of digital inkjet technology not just by advantage of quicker printing speeds, but by casting off inefficient practices and streamlining end-to-end workflows. Together, these advantages have effective potential to bring running costs down, stimulate growth and accelerate return on investment.