Konica Minolta
It took both of them
KONICA MINOLTA
Konica sold photographic paper before Kodak had finished inventing the category it competed in; Minolta sold the camera Sony’s own mount now descends from. Neither company makes either any more. What the merger kept turned out to be the copier, and by the numbers that matter to this magazine, kept it rather well.
Two separate nineties stories — Konica’s pharmacist-turned-photo-house dating to 1873, Minolta’s Osaka camera works from 1928, each racing toward digital colour from opposite directions (Konica via its 7000-series digital line, Minolta via DiALTA Di) — became one company in stages. Management integrated in August 2003; Konica Minolta Holdings, Inc. was structured that October; and in April 2013 the group dropped “Holdings” from its own name, the moment the merger stopped being a holding structure over two legacies and became, on paper as everywhere else, one company.
The merger did not save what it was partly built to shore up. On 19 January 2006 Konica Minolta announced its withdrawal from photography and cameras outright: the SLR line, Minolta’s Maxxum/Dynax mount included, transferred to Sony and became the seed of the Alpha system; the photo-imaging division — film, paper, chemicals, digital minilabs — closed in March 2006, sales wound down completely by that September. The stated reason was arithmetic: the camera unit had lost ¥7.3 billion in FY2004/05, undercut by a shrinking silver-halide market and a company that, notably, did not make its own image sensors. The research department notes for the record that the name still summons a camera to a certain generation, and that Konica Minolta has not sold one since 2006.
What survived was the half of the 2003 deal built on precision optics, imaging chemistry and mechatronics rather than film stock: bizhub for the office, and later AccurioPress/AccurioJet/AccurioLabel for the pressroom. By Infosource’s FY2025 read (April 2025–March 2026) across Western Europe, Central & Eastern Europe and the CIS, Konica Minolta Business Solutions Europe holds the No. 1 position in the A3 colour MFP market — 18.8% share, more than 119,300 units — the single hardest number in this brief, and reportedly the one the brand’s own press office repeats most cheerfully.
The current office range is the bizhub i-Series, refreshed twice this window: a July–September 2020 generation led by the C750i, superseded by a “next generation” refresh of 20 March 2024 spanning 21 devices, colour and mono, A3 and A4. The production arm, Accurio, runs the other end of the same bet — AccurioPress cut-sheet colour, AccurioPress mono, AccurioJet inkjet and AccurioLabel — and has now put a fifth toner station, running white, on both a cut-sheet colour press and a label press at once, a small piece of engineering repetition that reads, on the page opposite, like a house style.
Konica Minolta — The Range, 2026
| Model | Year | PPM | Notable |
|---|---|---|---|
| bizhub C750i | 2020 | 75 mono / 70 colour | 2020-gen flagship; auto media-sensing |
| bizhub C751i | 2024 | 75 mono / 70 colour | current flagship, 2024 i-Series refresh |
| bizhub C651i | 2024 | 65 | dual 280-opm scan, standard across tier |
| bizhub C451i | 2024 | 45 | dual 280-opm scan |
| bizhub C301i | 2024 | 30 | entry tier of the A3 colour line |
| bizhub C4001i | 2024 | 42 (shared w/ C3301i) | A4 single-function pairing |
| bizhub 4751i | 2024 | 50 (mono) | 90-ipm duplex scan, A4 compact MFP |
| AccurioPress C14000 | 2019 | 140 | debut of the line, PRINTING United Oct 2019 |
| AccurioPress C14010S | current | 140 | Plate No. 9; first 5th-station white toner |
| AccurioPress C7100 | 2021 | 100 / 110 | succeeded the C6100 series |
| AccurioPress 6136 | current | 136 (mono) | 1200×1200 dpi, 256 grey shades |
| AccurioLabel 400 | 2022 | 39.9 m/min | 5th-station white toner, label press |
| AccurioJet KM-1e | unverified | 3,000 sheets/hr | now filed under Predecessor Products |
The merger that worked, by the only number that counts
Not every 2003-vintage consolidation earns its own line in a market report two decades on. Konica Minolta’s does: per Infosource’s FY2025 figures, the merged company holds No. 1 position in the European A3 colour MFP market at 18.8% share and upward of 119,300 units, across Western Europe, Central & Eastern Europe and the CIS. It is worth pausing on the arithmetic behind it — two nineties camera-and-copier makers combined their office-print divisions while simultaneously admitting the camera business that partly justified the deal was dying. The office bet was the one that paid for itself.
One press, three identities, six years
The AccurioPress C14000 launched at PRINTING United in October 2019 at 140 ppm. In May 2023 it returned as the C14000e, faster by Konica Minolta’s own claim than any other toner-based device on the market, with an EFI Fiery 2.1 front end and TÜV-certified food-safe toner. It has since been renumbered again, to C14010S/C12010S, this time carrying the company’s first fifth-colour cut-sheet station running white toner. Same 140 ppm ceiling three times over; three names for the customer to keep straight.
THE VERDICT — KONICA MINOLTA
Buried the camera business with dignity, kept the office and the pressroom, and now leads Europe’s A3 colour market on the strength of it. The naming star is generous.