Color Printing Turf Wars

"We consider in-plants to be a vital market segment," says Vahaaj Khan, director of product management for digital printing at Heidelberg USA. Khan contends in-plants already running a sheetfed offset operation are an ideal site for a NexPress 2100.

Why all the fuss over this "in-plant market space?" Well, for the past five years the industry has been fighting a major battle for the lion's share of the digital color printing market. Several companies, like Heidelberg and Kodak, have partnered up; others dropped out of sight entirely. Some, like IBM, chose to mark a specialized territory—forms and data center printing, in IBM's case—and have dug in to protect it for the long haul. And still other companies, like Canon and Xerox, are duking it out in the open for mainstream color business.