The patents are not seen as significant barriers by Kodak, Fuji and Polychrome, all of whom I have spoken to at great lengths over the past year+, and others whom I have met at trade shows such as Graph Expo. The only reason that they are not in the market now, is because the market is not big enough to justify their involvment. Remember that Heidelberg only sold 100+ GTO-DI's since introduction in 1992, and to date while orders for 500+ QM-DI's have been taken, only a dozen or so have actually been installed. The QM-DI will likely if everything goes right, achieve an installed base of 1,000 eventually,as this short run market is a niche market. Pitman by the way base their forecasts on an installed base of only 250 QM-DI's,200 Pearlsetters and 75-100 Gerber Platesetters. John Dreyer from Pitman is on Presstek's Board of Directors, so their forecast should be better than most!
At 1,000 Kodak estimate that the plate business would be a 150,000,000 sq. ft market in annual sales which equals $500 million in top line sales. Remember that this market size is not a certainty and if it does unfold, it will be highly competetive. |
