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HP Stops Selling Printers, Starts Selling Prints
An anonymous reader writes "HP has launched a new line of business printers but there's a big catch — you won't be able to buy one. For the first time in history, the company will make customers purchase printing services, rather than the product itself. At its biggest printer launch since the LaserJet in 1984, HP's new business-class Edgeline printers will only be available through a managed services contract. Pricing will be per page, depending on the quality of the printout. Edgeline technology is said to be so ink-efficient that if HP were to sell these printers, they would never match the money they make from consumables (cartridges etc) now."
I don't see that HP will stop selling printers. They just won't sell this one. You can still buy other HP printers, though. But the Edgeline does seem like a nice printer, though. $50 says that in 5 years, every office will have one (that they own).
of this company here:/ 22/1241222
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03
Basically the ultrawide print head and instataneous drying times, etcetera. Any confirmation?
Exactly. They claim only a 30% ink saving ... kind of hard to believe that they can't makee it up by increased demand, same as everyone else does when they lower costs.
True, it would be stupid to stop selling printers anyway. A printer in which I don't get a print in less than a few minutes isn't very useful to me.
Ink for business printers is a lot cheaper than with consumer printers anyway. That's the nature of the business, you want a cheap printer, they want you to pay for the ink. If you want cheap ink, then you pay for a more expensive printer. HP and many other companies treat their consumer products differently from their business products because they are different markets with different expectations.
I noticed that the product launch was in China, and that had me thinking...
The chinese are notorious for buying something, reverse engineering it, and within a period of time having a duplicate chinese version for sale. Maybe HP is trying to prevent that from happening?
leasing their 914 instead of selling it was the decision that catapulted them into the Fortune 50. Few offices could afford to buy a 914 (at many thousands), but leasing one for a few hundred, and paying a few extra for those extra prints was fine.
Their calculators have become a laughing stock. The lucky folks who still have a functional 12c from the days of old (early 80s) will enjoy them for decades more to come. I'd sooner use a bag of rocks than a 12c built during/after the Lewis Platt (successor: Carly) regime.
While this announcement is for a business printer, expect this trend to continue. Cheap printers are a commodity, so squeezing pennies out of the market will eventually lead to "virtual printers" or somesuch idiocy. Smart people are willing to pay for quality, someone just needs to offer a quality printer.
HP isn't the company to do it. Not any more.
Yeah, right.
They have been pissing on their channel for a long time with online sales; this is just them dropping drawers and shitting on the channel, too.
HP just realizes that they participate in a functional duopoly with a direct-sales competitor who doesn't really have a channel and that they don't need to be slaves to theirs.
I'm surprised that they would approach this printing market, though. One of the advantages owning your own printer has is that its much cheaper to own than any of the "managed services" pay-per-page copiers already in the market.
Those are starter cartridges. Some brands like HP try to trick you now. They sell the starter size cartridges (and call them 'normal') in addition to a normal size cartridge they now call 'large'. That way the salesman call tell you they come with a full cartridge and the part number matches. It still has the same amount of ink in it as the starter cartridge of old.
'I'm in IT, and we measure all costs per page, managed or unmanaged. Most people don't even think of cost over the life of the printer, and choose inkjets because they are 1/5 the price of laser, and spend much more over the life of the printer buying ink.'
True but its an artificial increase. Once upon a time I printed 500-2000 page books on my HP deskjet printers. Not one printer died and the cartridge lasted. Now you'd run out of ink if you printed a 200 page book.
Thanks to the excellent Linux support by the HPLIP Project I am faithful to HP, at least for the time being. I am quite impressed that pretty much all features of my all-in-one printer have been working for years, without any major glitches.
I have seen the Windows HP drivers (quite a while ago) and have to say that at the time they were far too intrusive for my liking and I would not have used the HP software under Windows. So I'd buy an HP printer for Linux, but if I were using Windows I'd probably compare lots of makes first and my choice might be different.
"Edgeline technology is said to be so ink-efficient that if HP were to sell these printers, they would never match the money they make from consumables (cartridges etc) now."
Got a link for this? I fail to see how an ink-efficient printer would affect their current business model. If anything it would improve their margins. Let's say the edgeline uses 50% less ink than other printers, simply put 50% less ink in the edgeline cartridges and charge the same price for them, problem solved.
I think we're all aware that current pricing structures for printer cartridges is a joke, it has little or no basis in what the cartridges actually cost to manufacture, so it's not like an edgeline printer would be some disruptive force in the marketplace.
It would filter down a lot sooner if printer manufacturers would adopt this fantastic new business model where you charge what products are actually worth and not adopt this "buy this cheap, pay for extras to keep us afloat" mentality. This is just another version of a company wanting a constant, consistant revenue stream verses having to actually innovate and keep product lines fresh to get new sales.
Everyone wants to be a utility,
Well, the problem is - that's what the public bought, the cheap printers over the expensive ones with the low priced consumables. Of course now they cry over the price of ink - but we all know the public is stupid.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck