Sharp Enters High-Production Printing Biz

Ricoh's announcement Printer Document

At its dealer conference in Las Vegas on Monday, Sharp DSCA, a subsidiary of Sharp Electronics, took the wraps off its first production systems for the high-volume market: the MX-M850, MX-M950 and MXm11000. The new devices print and copy at high speeds in the neighborhood of 85 pages per minute (ppm) to 110 ppm.

The new machines also support Sharp's Open System Architecture development platform. Launched last May, OSA is a client/server-based architecture that allows network applications to communicate with the MFP and remotely control MFP functions and operation panel screens. This enables users to connect to business applications through the MFP without requiring a PC.

For example, Sharp attendees at the Las Vegas conference registered on-site through interactive menus on multifunction devices, which then printed out customized materials.

About 80 developers have enrolled to support OSA since its launch, Sharp says.

Sharp sells mainly through its 400 copier dealers, but it also sells through smaller dealers and IT VARs via its channel reseller program, for which about it has about 100 partners.