Lexmark Chief Sees Software Complementing Its Printer Business

Printer maker Lexmark International Inc. (LXK), like others in the technology industry, has spent years wrestling with a maturing hardware market that drags down its top line.

Unlike many of its competitors, however, Chief Executive Paul Rooke says the company can succeed by sticking to its core business and adding software around it. That approach is different from peers like Xerox Corp. (XRX), which have diversified further afield with new offerings, such as outsourcing.

Lexmark has spent the past three years focusing on software that helps companies scan and manage images like papers, records and media files that can’t fit so easily onto an electronic spreadsheet–everything from written job applications to surgery videos.

“We’re attacking this broader unstructured information problem,” Mr. Rooke said in an interview following the company’s recent investor summit in New York. “Nobody is bringing all these diverse sets of content together in one place and connecting it into the core, other than Lexmark.”