Xerox Corporation CEO Rick Thoman says the opportunities facing the digital on-demand printing industry are unprecedented. "Our studies, backed up by data from XPLOR International, indicate that the total number of electronic and paper documents will soar to twenty trillion by 2005 and 40% of that market will be available to the digital printing industry." Thoman made the remarks as part of his keynote address kicking off 'On Demand 2000', one of the industry's premier international events for digital printing and publishing, held at the Jacob Javits Center in New York.

Thoman's comments follow the unveiling yesterday of two high-end digital printing products - which he says strengthen the company's position as the leader in digital production printing and publishing. The products include the Xerox DocuColor 2000 Series and Xerox DocuTech 2000 Series printing systems; components for high-speed image scanning; and software tools that enable these printing systems to be connected to the Internet for global document distribution and e-commerce applications.

Thoman expects that by the end of the decade on-demand digital printing will produce virtually all of the forms and most of the catalogue and book products. "The impact of the digital, connected, Internet world cannot be overstated," said Thoman. "The Internet is bringing dynamic change to the new business of printing. Colour will be pervasive. Technological breakthroughs will make colour and the transmission of documents geometrically easier, faster, higher quality, and cheaper. Documents themselves will change. They will move seamlessly between the paper and digital worlds and they will increasingly contain music and video as well as text and pictures," predicted Thoman.

In his keynote, Thoman also urged the industry to embrace the need for continuing dialogue and collaboration. "I have no doubt that companies like Xerox will continue to push the frontiers of technology at faster and faster rates of speed, but if we go our separate ways, we will lose the opportunity to harness the technology for the needs of our customers. If we form true partnerships, the opportunities that stretch out before us are enormous."

Xerox SA

Tel: (011) 928 9353

juliet.hanson@zaf.xerox.com

www.xerox.com