2001/637/EC: Commission Decision of 18 October 2000 on State aid which the Netherlands is planning to grant to Océ NV for the development of colour ink-jet printers (Text with EEA relevance) (notified under document number C(2000) 3016)

• Articles: 4

Article 1

The aid which the Netherlands is planning to implement for Océ NV, amounting to NLG 50 million (EUR 22,7 million), for the development of colour ink-jet printers, is compatible with the common market, subject to the conditions set out in Article 2.

Article 2

The Netherlands shall strictly and on an annual basis monitor the progress of the project and shall ensure that all eligible costs in fact correspond to expenditure incurred for the Cobalt project. The Netherlands shall submit at least five consecutive annual reports to the Commission. These reports shall comprise conclusive and detailed evidence of the exact destination of the aid for expenditure actually incurred and the eligible costs of the Cobalt project and shall include detailed financial statements.

Article 3

The Netherlands shall inform the Commission, within two months of notification of this Decision, of the measures taken to comply with it.

Article 4

This Decision is addressed to the Kingdom of the Netherlands.

Done at Brussels, 18 October 2000.

For the Commission

Mario Monti

Member of the Commission

(1) OJ C 270, 29.8.1998, p. 2.

(2) See footnote 1.

(3) See under "total revenues" in the 1998 annual report of Océ.

(4) Confidential information.

(5) Confidential information.

(6) Confidential information.

(7) OJ C 45, 17.2.1996, p. 6.

(8) Océ's 1997 annual report stated market shares of over 35 % worldwide and 25 % in Europe.

(9) PBTS scheme: Programmatische Bedrijfsgerichte Technologiestimulering (business-oriented technology-stimulation scheme).

(10) A detailed description of earlier R & D is included in the "assessment" part of this Decision.

(11) See footnote 6.

(12) As Article 87(1) of the EC Treaty also stipulates "potential" distortion of competition, potential competitors also have to be considered, which means that the analysis must include the concept of supply substitutability, i.e. the ability of other companies to easily produce (switch to) the product in question. As in the present case there is in fact actual competition, supply substitutability need not be examined in detail in this Decision.

(13) Howtek's Thermo-Jet and the Pixelmaster.

(14) "Color encroaches on the desktop", Byte, June 1995.

(15) In 1998, Tektronix demonstrated laboratory hot-melt ink printers operating at speeds of up to 100 (small format) colour pages per minute (press release of 13 October 1998). The latest commercially available small-format solid-ink printer of Alpha Merics uses resin-based solid-ink sticks and is capable of producing 10 colour pages per minute of photorealistic prints of up to 1200 dots per inch (dpi).

(16) One of the first piezoelectric ink-jet printers capable of colour photorealistic printing at 360 dpi was the Cammjet introduced by Roland in 1996. Rapid evolution in piezoelectric printhead technology is evidenced by the fact that in 1998 the company introduced the Hi-Fi Jet, a wide-format printer capable of producing photorealistic prints at 1440 dpi. Several other products are capable of producing 54-inch-wide prints at a resolution of 720 dpi. In terms of printing speed, several of the current generation of printers can print a poster (34 inches by 44 inches) at a resolution of 300 to 360 dpi in about four minutes. The Xerox ColorgrafX Xpress 54, CalComp CrystalJet 7000 Series, Raster Graphics Piezo Print 5000 and ColorPix Pro 54 fall within this group.Products based on thermal ink-jet technologies became commercially available in the early 1990s. Encad and Hewlett Packard introduced the first wide-format printers in 1993. The latest products, such as the Encad PRO 600e and HP DesignJet 3500CP, can print a poster (34 inches by 44 inches) at 600 dpi in about seven minutes (economy mode). Continual advances in thermal ink-jet technology now means that products with 72-inch print widths and apparent resolution of 1200 dpi are on the market (e.g. Colorspan's DisplayMaker Series).

(17) The author of the second opinion believed that around 6 % is the normal share of R & D spending in the microsystems technology sector.