The Xerox/Canon Showdown

Back in October 2002, Canon USA released its CLC 3900 (now 3900+), a copier/printer turning out 39 pages per minute (ppm) in either color or black and white.

The 3900 is a slightly-less-robust addition to a product line that includes Canon's CLC 5000, a production-level copier/printer producing 50 ppm. At the time, Mason Olds, the company's then-general manager for the color systems division, claimed, "This product has no direct competition right now."

Jump to February, 2003: Xerox goes head-to-head with Canon with the release of the Xerox 3535, pushing 35 ppm in either black and white or color.

Until that late-winter release, Canon counted Xerox's DocuColor 2045 as its toughest competition for the sought-after in-plant dollar. But Mark Suzuki, director and assistant general manager for Canon's color systems division, contends, "Color [quality] put us over the top."

Canon representatives say that even as the economy slips, sales of their CLC 3900+ are increasing, cementing what they say is a 50 percent share of the mid-range market space.

But Abby Abhyankar, Xerox's vice president for integrated marketing, says while Canon has put up his company's toughest competition, he believes the release of the 3535 will yank back that lost territory.

"Canon may be the biggest competition, but we are going to target that very aggressively," he says. "In environments where runs go up to 40,000 a month, we had a hole. We did not have a 3535 type of product. So the 3535 is going to be a very formidable competitor."

That "hole," by the way, is the in-plant market. So there you have it: the Canon CLC 3900+ versus the Xerox DocuColor 3535, two of the most closely-matched middleweights in the business. Place your bets.