Dell
Makes Multiple OEM Deals
More
than happy with its decision in 2002 to move to private labeling
printers from Lexmark (it tried to do the deal with HP, but HP
didn’t want to dilute its brand), Dell has announced a series of
new OEM deals with a variety of printing and imaging vendors.
They include Kodak, Samsung, and Xerox International Partners
(a joint venture of Xerox and Fuji Xerox).
While
HP has hinted that Dell is less than happy with its Lexmark
partnership, Michael Dell made it clear that these new arrangements
were in addition to, not a replacement for, the Lexmark partnership,
which would remain intact.
Dell
declined to indicate just what types of products it might add to its
line or when, but we got the feeling that we’d start to hear more
about these relationships pretty soon.
Sunil
Gupta, XIP president and chief executive officer was clearly pleased
that this new relationship (he says XIP has a dozen or so such OEM
relationships, all private label), couldn’t comment at all about
products or timing, but he did admit that there might be new service
opportunities for Xerox as part of the Dell relationship.
Xerox also noted that XIP is 51% owned by Xerox, so revenues
of the partnership flow to the corporation.
Think
of the possibilities:
-
Digital
copiers at any and every price point imaginable.
-
Multi-function
systems, based on both ink-jet and laser technology.
-
Higher
capability laser printers, designed for group usage in corporate
settings, very much in line with Dell’s ambitions to do more
business higher up the feeding chain.
-
Color
laser printers.
We’d
guess that with this kind of portfolio to choose from, Dell is
planning to give HP a very good run for the money in 2004.
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