Scanning The Future
With digital cameras rising in popularity, and drum scanner lines being pulled from the market, is there a future for scanners?
by MARK SMITH
When Heidelberg announced it was discontinuing "all scanner development and production operations," it sent a few shock waves through the industry. After all, high-end scanning used to be all but synonymous with Hell drum machines, a tradition Heidelberg inherited when it acquired Linotype-Hell.
According to Heidelberg, the market for scanners has experienced a downturn in recent years, with declines as great as 20 percent in 2001 alone, depending on market and product.
"This move is a timely response to the changing needs and trends in the market," says Bernhard Schreier, CEO of Heidelberg Druckmaschinen. "We will be focusing our prepress business on workflow software and plate imaging."
Among the scanner products set to vanish from Heidelberg's portfolio are all desktop models (the entire Linoscan range) and high-end devices (including the flatbed Nexscan and drum-based Primescan).
To some, this development may appear to be an omen of the inevitable demise of scanning services. After all, hasn't digital photography been slowly stealing scanning business for years now?
The remaining high-end scanner manufacturers aren't ready to write off scanners yet, however. Nor are the in-plants who rely on them.
"I don't see scanners going away," remarks Richard Raveson, director of graphic communications for the North Broward Hospital District, in Fort Lauderdale. "In fact, coming next year, I'm putting a higher-speed scanner in." He points out that logos, hand-drawn artwork and photos are keeping his shop's scanners quite busy.
Not Dead Yet
Predictions about the demise of scanning are nothing new, notes Kjeld Moselund, vice president of product marketing for commercial printing and scanners at Esko-Graphics, in Denmark.
"Some scanner developers declared the market dead as early as 1990," he points out. "Our scanner sales have held steady, and we're still finding a significant market in first-time buyers, as well as shops looking to expand their existing capabilities."
"We believe the market for scanners will continue to be viable for two to five years at least, and we remain committed to this market," adds Lars Jensen, Esko-Graphics' product manager for scanners.
Still, high-end scanners are not in demand as much as they used to be.
"The drum scanner market is a mature market and, as a result, sales activity has been declining for the past few years," concedes Ray McAllister, senior manager at Screen (USA), in Rolling Meadows, Ill. It's a classic good news/bad news situation, however, since McAllister says the company actually has seen an increase in customer inquiries because it is the only remaining manufacturer of drum machines among the traditional big three vendors.
A global perspective is needed to truly evaluate the viability of drum scanners, the product manager adds.
"If you consider a developing country like China, for example, drum scanner sales are still strong. Therefore, Screen will continue to manufacture both types of high-end scanners: drum and flatbed."
In nearby Hanover Park, Ill., Fujifilm Graphic Systems U.S.A. actually beat Heidelberg to the punch in going halfway down the same road.
"We didn't make a big public announcement, but we stopped selling our drum scanner line [Celsis] as of about the first of this year," reports Eric Neumann, product manager for color input.
While drum scanner demand has been on the decline, Neumann says flatbed sales in the graphic arts market have been stable to slightly increasing.
"Color management is a key area of enhancement for all of our scanners and an area where we are putting a lot of our focus as a company," he says.
Fujifilm recently started going after the photographic market, he adds. And even though the company addresses graphic arts and photographic users as two separate markets, Neumann says both support ongoing development of the technology. The company's Finescan product lines for the photographic market and its Quattro graphic arts scanners are all built on a common platform, he points out.
"The different capabilities, productivity and price points of the products are targeted to the specific markets, though," Neumann adds.
Photography Market Significant
William Gillooly, marketing manager for input systems at Creo Inc., in Bedford, Mass., says his company also recognizes the opportunity for the photographic market to help drive ongoing development and support of scanners.
"The digital revolution that has been going on in the printing marketplace over the last 10 years is happening right now in the photo lab business," he points out. "The photography market is becoming very significant for us."
Though Creo is also a player in the digital photography arena through its stake in the Leaf Group, Gillooly doesn't believe the technology is having a big impact on scanning.
"There are niche markets, like catalogs, that are working very hard at converting over to a digital photography workflow," he says. "In general, though, there is more of a buzz about digital photography than actual purchases being made."
The marketing manager doesn't think the market for scanners actually has turned all that bleak.
"There is more color work being done...so, consequently, more scanning is being done," Gillooly says. "At the same time, designers and ad agencies are the number two market for our entry-level machines."
The availability of inexpensive, low- to mid-level scanners has put more color capabilities into the hands of print buyers, agencies and designers, agrees Susan Wittner, marketing director at Agfa Graphic Systems in Ridgefield Park, N.J.
"As workflows move 'completely' digital, the need for scans has been greatly reduced," Wittner says.
"We predict within five years most images will be created digitally," adds Deborah Hutcheson, Agfa's U.S. marketing manager for workflow and digital proofing systems. "While the market for scanners is declining, low-cost flatbed scanners continue to improve in capability. Combine those two factors, and vendors find it difficult to justify continuing to support high-end scanners in this market."
Not Aggressively Selling
According to Wittner, Agfa is not aggressively selling scanners in the U.S., but it continues to do so in other countries.
"Selling a scanner is easy, but to do it right, a vendor really needs a scanner specialist team to support buyers," she asserts. For the U.S. market, Wittner says Agfa is focused on using its color management expertise to improve proofing and workflow.
There would appear to be a consensus that the market for scanners, like their design, is flattening out. Even though the end of the product cycle for high-end graphic arts machines may be in sight, it's not quite time to pull the plug.
