Last week IBM and Ricoh announced the two companies would start sharing each other's sales network in 2009 and promote their servers and printers together. The alliance will enable them to offer corporate clients International Business Machines Corp's servers and Ricoh's copiers and printers as a, comprehensive office information technology system. Ricoh expects the new business ties with IBM to help boost its sales by 1.10 billion in two to three years. Ricoh, competing with Canon, Xerox and Konica Minolta in copiers and printers, forecast 2.15 trillion yen in sales for the current business year ending March. IBM and Ricoh will start handling each other's products in their U.S. sales channels in spring 2009, with the cooperation set to expand to other regions including Europe and Asia.
Ricoh bought IBM's digital commercial printer business for $725 million in 2007. Digital commercial printers are used to print big documents such as product manuals and direct mail quickly and in large volumes, and are one of the fastest-growing segments of the office equipment market.
Source: www.reuters.com
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