U.S. postage-meter pioneer Pitney Bowes sees future cooperating with Postal Services Agency, new entrants

　The progress of reform to Japanﾕs postal system ﾐ involving setting up a public postal corporation next year and deregulation allowing private companies to enter the mail-delivery market ﾐ is being closely watched by foreign companies in search of opportunities both on the business and technical sides.
　One such keen observer is Pitney Bowes Japan Corp., the Japanese subsidiary of the U.S. firm that pioneered the postage-meter business a century ago.
　At a seminar on privatization held last November by the Japanese unit, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Michael Critelli of parent Pitney Bowes Inc. proposed that the new postal system be built around cooperation between the service users, private companies and the Postal Services Agency under the Ministry of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications.
　While in Tokyo, Critelli and two senior vice presidents called on the Postal Services Agency and systems companies to use their technology to make the most of the business opportunity presented by postal reform.
　Pitney Bowes was established in 1901 when founder Arthur Pitney won a patent for a machine to calculate and print postage directly onto mail as a substitute for postage stamps.
　The machine, which saved the time and effort involved in putting stamps on mail one by one, played a large role in helping cut costs at companies that had to send a wide variety of mail. The modern-day version of that device holds over 60% of the world postage-meter market and has a No.1 share in the U.S. and Australia.
　Over the past decade the company has invented a system to read postage meters via the Internet, and another that downloads postage via the Internet for printing on mail.
　Together with the U.S. Postal Service, the firm introduced online systems in 1999 for settling postal charges and tracking and locating bar-coded mail. The bar codes also allow receivers to know who sent the mail and when.
　Pitney Bowes acts as a technical consultant to the U.S. Postal Service, which records annual sales of over $60 billion. Two years ago, the two began co-hosting a project to consider technological standardization aiming to further raise efficiency.
　The company holds more than 3,400 patents. It reported $3.88 billion in sales and $622 million in net profit for the year ended December 2000, boasting a ratio of net profit to sales of 16%.
　Sales at Pitney Bowes Japan, in contrast, were only \4 billion, or 1% of the parentﾕs, due to factors unique to the local postal system, said a Japanese marketing manager.
　Postage metering became legal here in 1952. The Japanese post office handles some 22 billion letters and packages a year, but only 5% of them use metering because of the inconvenience of having to take the mail to the post office to be checked.
　Instead, a deferred payment system, which allows customers to pay their total postage for the previous month, is popular. It is a self-declaration system based on the actual weight of outgoing mail, and 44% of all mail employed the system in fiscal 2000.

　With deregulation expected to bring full-scale competition to the mail-delivery business, the postal authority could lose market share to private companies with better technology. Critelli is confident that both the agency and the private sector will want to use his companyﾕs systems.
　Pitney Bowes has already started market research, sending researchers here from the U.S. and the U.K. Its target is to simplify the deferred payment system using the Internet and phone lines.
　One possible competitor is Ascom Hasler (Japan) Inc., the Japanese subsidiary of a Swiss postage-meter company. "We want to work with both the Postal Agency and private companies entering the postal business," said President Yasuo Ssaki.
　In the telecommunications sector, full-fledged liberalization that began in 1980s sparked technological innovation, brought down consumer prices sharply and created huge equipment and Systems markets. Similarly, reform of the postal system is expected to created new markets, with competition raising service levels and pushing prices down.

2002年1月28日