Wide Format Imaging

In the wide-format digital market, wide-format scanners are becoming a more important part of the workflow process. Wide-format scanners are helping to bridge the gap between online communication and collaboration enabling imagers the ability to provide a multitude of services for their customers.

But, what are they looking for? When it comes to customer requests in the wide-format scanner market, increased speeds, better quality, and lower price are at the top of the list.

"Most scanners now have very similar feature sets and offer similar levels of performance and image quality. I think it is probably quite tough for a lot of potential buyers to understand what the key requirements are for their application," says Peter de Winter Brown, sales and marketing director, Colortrac. "The most important features people consider are the format size, optical (real) image resolution, color image quality, scanning speed and last, but not least, both the standard and optional software that is supplied with the scanner."

Steve Blanken, sales director with Vidar agrees, additionally listing cost vs. performance, ease of use, and the seamless connection to printers as other important criteria for users.

Price, though, still remains a very important component in the purchasing process?and something that has been changing in buyers' favor. "It depends on who you are asking but price is still number one," says Henrik Vestermark with UK-based The Other Solutions. "The pressure on price?which decreased seven percent in 2005?will continue. How much the average price will decrease is too early to predict but I will not be surprised if the price decline will be larger than 10 percent in 2006."

An Evolving Need

"Scanners are becoming more of a digital gateway for communication in a lot of applications," says Roger Ilgen, director of wide-format solutions, GEI.

While scanners have remained a mainstay of the industry for the past several years, we're beginning to see a move toward more multi-function systems: integrating wide-format scanners into scan-to-print systems, allowing customers to scan-to-archive or -email but giving them the ability to create a large copy-system.