Océ Throttles Up Inkjet Market

Océ’s nine systems and HP’s T-series—clearly the leaders—are proving more than adequate to the needs of the market, and both companies are intent on raising the bar on print quality. What’s important to bear in mind is that, in terms of technological development, production-class inkjet printing is about where electrophotographic color printing was around 1998 or so. Back then, it only sort of worked, and not without (often significant) pain. So inkjet is only going to get dramatically better—and probably soon.

With Océ’s range of products, a tight focus on the markets with the most potential (transactional/transpromo, books, direct mail and newspapers), and Canon’s intent to be one of the leading forces in print communications, we can expect to see even more from Océ. The company says it already has some 167 engines installed around the world and more orders are coming in across its inkjet lineup.

That the company is announcing these new machines some 11 months before drupa 2012 probably means more is in the pipeline and that Océ will be enlarging its inkjet offerings next May in Dusseldorf. The other purveyors of inkjet should be paying attention.