Mannesmann Tally GmbH, the computer printer manufacturer that officially merged with Siemens Office Products Division on October 1, is gloating that the resulting company is now a force to be reckoned with in Europe’s printer industry, with a strengthened position against the Japanese. The new Mannesmann Tally, which is 51% owned by Mannesmann AG and 49% by Siemens AG, is known as Mannesmann Tally – a Mannesmann and Siemens company. The merger has added ink-jet and thermal transfer products to Mannesmann Tally’s existing range of dot matrix, laser and line printers and, quick to maximise on the broadened range of products, Mannesmann Tally last week launched its MT735 six page per minute portable thermal transfer printer. The new product was designed by Siemens which, prior to the merger, had been about to launch the product under its own name. Made in Japan – well if you can’t beat them, you can always sell their products, the 735 has an A4 footprint and weighs 8 lbs 6 oz with the battery which is embedded in the machine. Says Mannesmann’s Dave Allison, the new product combines portability with the power and speed of the desktop page printer – anything you can do in the office you can now do in the field. The environmentally friendly (no ozone emissions and minimal noise) MT735 has 1Mb of memory and has 18 resident Portrait and Landscape fonts. It has a print resolution of 300 by 300 dots per inch and one transfer ribbon prints 150 pages – the built-in power pack, which is claimed to last the life of the unit, will print this number of pages on one charge. An integral sheet feeder holds 80 sheets of A4 paper or transparencies. There are four standard emulations – HP LaserJet Series II, HP DeskJet Plus, IBM Proprinter X24 and Epson LQ850. No options, such as PostScript, are planned for the 735. The printer has one Centronics parallel – port and there is no serial option. Mannesmann Tally is targeting the new product at two areas mobile users such as sales and insurance agents, and company executives that want to save desk space in the office and can take the printer home or to a meeting. National advertising will follow a mailshot which is being sent to 150,000 users. Intended to attack the 6ppm printer market, the MT735 – available now from Mannesmann Tally distributors – is priced at UKP1,000 including a battery recharger and a year’s guarantee. Running costs include a seven pence per page charge and a new ribbon will cost UKP10.50. Mannesmann has also announced new prices for some of its other products – the MT905 entry-level laser printer has been reduced UKP200 to UKP1,100; the MT906SB has been cut to UKP1,300; the MT906DB dual-bin for word processing is down to UKP1,500 and Mannesmann is boasting that its MT906SB P/S, at UKP1,900, is now the cheapest PostScript laser printer on the market. The company says it will soon be launching a high quality colour product. After that, it sees its next step as developing 20ppm printers. And Siemens will be launching an attack on Hewlett-Packard and Canon next year with its own BubbleJet technology. Mannesmann Tally is currently negotiating second sourcing its ink-jet heads to other companies. As for the fate of Mannesmann-Kienzle GmbH (CI No 1,518), Owain Evans, Mannesmann Tally’s UK general manager, says Munich has denied Der Spiegel’s suggestion that Fujitsu will be its buyer – though Evans feels Kienzle’s fate will have to be along those lines. In his opinion, it will all be wrapped up by Christmas in time for Mannesmann’s financial year-end. – Susan Norris
