April 7, 2008
Konica Minolta Enters into Strategic Business Alliance Agreement with Oce
Konica Minolta Holdings, Inc (President and CEO: Yoshikatsu Ota) entered into a strategic business alliance agreement with Oce, a company headquartered in Venlo, The Netherlands (President and CEO: Rokus van Iperen) on April 4, 2008 to cooperate in development and marketing for office and production printing systems.
Background
Based on basic partnership agreement announced on Jan 15 2008, both parties confirmed more concrete policy and plan overviewed as below.
Overview of the strategic business alliance agreement
(1) Research & Development
Both companies will examine and compare each other's existing cut-sheet product lines to determine the optimal product mix and jointly develop new products and technology of next generation.
The companies will jointly develop monochrome and colour output equipments for the light and mid-range production equipment market which is expected to grow rapidly.
(2) Sales strategy
Office printing systems: Konica Minolta will supply its products to Oce on an OEM basis, from its entire product line.
Production printing systems: Both companies will supply products to each other on OEM basis. For the joint developed products, each party will sell through each sales channel with each brand.
This strategic business alliance will provide Konica Minolta with entry to one of the most extensive provider in the industry for office as well as production printing systems and related software products.
Konica Minolta will promote the "genre-top strategy" (a strategy to concentrate the management resources on the most promising business areas and markets to ensure global leadership in these fields) in these growing markets, especially in the field of color printing systems. In this way, Konica Minolta aims to achieve group-wide growth and maximize its corporate value.