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HP Explains Why Printer Ink Is So Expensive

Posted by kdawson on from the megabucks-per-picoliter dept.

CWmike writes "'There's a perception that [printer] ink is one of the most expensive substances in the world,' says Thom Brown, marketing manager at HP. Well, yeah. One might get that feeling walking out of a store having spent $35 for a single ink cartridge that appears to contain fewer fluid ounces of product than a Heinz ketchup packet. Brown was ready to explain. He presented a series of PowerPoint slides aptly titled 'Why is printer ink so expensive?' I was ready for answers. The key point in a nutshell: Ink technology is expensive, and you pay for reliability and image quality. 'These liquids are completely different from a technology standpoint,' Brown says, adding that users concerned about cost per page can buy 'XL' ink cartridges from HP that last two to three times longer. (Competitors do the same.) The message: You get value for the money. No getting around it though — ink is still expensive, particularly if you have to use that inkjet printer for black-and-white text pages."

15 of 651 comments (clear)

  1. Confusing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If people are paying for the precision and technology behind the ink printing itself, that still doesn't explain why it's so expensive. How can they afford to print the label on that ketchup packet for so cheaply? Printing and ink technology isn't exactly brand new, I guess I'm a little confused. If I pay $35 for an ink cartridge that is the size of a ketchup packet, it better be super concentrated precision ink that can stick to tin foil and will last for a gazillion print jobs. HP seems better at selling snake oil then they do printer ink.

  2. Give me Laser Toner any day of the week by tyrione · · Score: 4, Insightful

    and even Color Laser Toner, twice on Sunday. This fad with inkjet is amazingly short-sided by people who would buy this junk and just print off their digital photos, instead of buying digital picture frames to load up their images to have around the house. Keep buying it as my Laser montone and color printers are dirt cheap today.

    1. Re:Give me Laser Toner any day of the week by NewbieProgrammerMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I bought a color laser printer over two years ago, and haven't had to buy toner yet. I haven't been careful about what I printed...the printer volume page says it has printed 3463 pages, all the color toner cartriges indicate 100% full, and the black toner is 60% full.

      I'm never buying an inkjet again.

      --
      [b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
  3. No... by GWRedDragon · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They want you to think ink costs a lot to produce, but it's actually that they are selling the printer as a loss-leader with the idea that the cost will be made up for in ink sales.

  4. When you control the market by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You can charge anything you want. This might as well have been titled "DeBeers explains why diamonds are so expensive," or "Saudi Aramco explains why oil is so expensive."

  5. It's their business model... not the cost of ink by CodePwned · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's simple. They sell printers at a loss and ink at over 500 to 5000% it's value. That's why you see all those kiosks that will refill your ink. The problem is some of them don't use "quality" ink. You know a company is full of shit when they start to use microchips to prevent 3rd party ink cartridges. Be smart!! Buy a laser printer. Most of those are VASTLY more efficient. I've printed almost 2,000 pages off of my Samsung ML 2581ND laser printer and it's still going strong.

    Color prints work the same. If you invest in a good printer, the ink doesn't cost much. If you get a $20 printer expect to pay that $50-$70 difference in ink.

  6. Razor Blades by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's just like Razors and Razor Blades. That's how Gillette and Schick make their money.

  7. is it.... by Brian+Boitano · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is it because yachts are expensive?

    --
    What would Brian Boitano do?
  8. Collusion by sethstorm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Brown says, adding that users concerned about cost per page can buy 'XL' ink cartridges from HP that last two to three times longer. (Competitors do the same).

    Collusion?

    The message: You get value for the money. No getting around it though: Ink is still expensive, particularly if you have to use that inkjet printer for black-and-white text pages."

    ...and no bullshit can explain it, even if your competitors do it.

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  9. You mean Hurd (ex Teradata), not Fiorina. by sethstorm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The worse thing is that Fiorina wants to be a part of government, and multiply her failure (as well as make use of her H1-b special interests).

    --
    Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
  10. No sensible, honest person would work for HP? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    HP is lying, I think.

    You can buy bottles of ink and fill the cartridges, and the ink works fine. They put chips in the cartridges to try to prevent refilling. If the ink were really expensive, they wouldn't need the chips.

    The HP "explanation" is powerful public relations. It says, "No sensible, honest person would work for HP. The management is dishonest."

    Why be abused?

    1. Re:No sensible, honest person would work for HP? by MrNaz · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're talking out of your ass.

      Once an ink formulation has been designed, it can easily be remade. Kind of like how pharmaceuticals can be remade, except developing ink doesn't take a fraction of the cost to R&D. The bulk of the R&D costs are in the printer itself, but there is far more money charging for consumables rather than the durables.

      As was pointed out, ink isn't new. Sure, printers are getting better and better, but I'd be the formulation of ink hasn't changed much since the first Bubblejet printers showed up on the market in the early 90s.

      HP is lying. The truth is ink is expensive because making it so makes them lots and lots of money for items which can be mass-produced on the cheap. Oh, and I don't buy your "ink cartridges are precision items" BS either. Some ink cartridges cost more than a low-end CPU. Try convincing me that something that is 99% moulded plastic with a few small parts is harder to fabricate than a part with several hundred million transistors, fabricated in a factory that is probably worth more than HP's market capitalization.

      Nah. I don't buy HP's BS. Or yours for that matter.

      --
      I hate printers.
    2. Re:No sensible, honest person would work for HP? by tonywong · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Perhaps you need a course in anger management.

      The model of ink jet printers and ink cartridges being like the razor and razor blade model has been established for decades now. The biggest issue with the pricing of the ink is in the advancement of the technology as well as the replacement cycles.

      Once you slow down the replacement cycle the R&D overhead with the new models will become less of an issue, and prices of cartridges will start to fall.

      However, no one ever said that you had to buy into the manufacturer's game. If you don't like HP's inkjet prices, then don't buy it. No one put a gun to your head, and if you didn't do your research to profile which printer cost you the least over time for your printing needs, the only person you have to blame is yourself.

      FWIW, the technology behind inkjet printers has advanced substantially over the years. Just because you may not appreciate it, others might and do.

      The resolution of inkjets has gotten markedly higher, the droplet size smaller, placement more precise, less clogging. Along with the switch to pigmented (versus dye) ink, the permanence has gone up radically (beyond silver halide) and the gamut even larger.

      A good indication of where the consumer inkjets are going is from the higher end photo printing market. A decent comparison of the latest inkjets can be found here:
      http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/printers/x300.shtml

      That comparison is of the 24" and 44" roll fed models from Canon, HP and Epson. Note the gamut increase from one generation and the competition's. If you don't think the formulation of the ink has changed to get the vibrance of a pigmented ink suspension versus a dye ink, you should really do some research before flaming a guy who had purported to spend some time with the HP engineers.

      Are inkjet cartridges premium priced? You betcha. Are HP inkjets carts out of line with the competition? I doubt it.

      Just remember the HP formulation may not be the same as another manufacturer's since they have different methods of laying down the ink. As well, HP has cheap user replaceable heads while some manufacturers like Epson, do not. The cost of the head is figured into the price, of course.

      As well, HP's profits are definitely anchored by the printing division, but if the numbers were so far out of line with the other printer manufacturers, they'd be doing something wrong. And if all printer manufacturers were so greedy as to be ripping everyone off, you'd have a huge amount of competitors flooding into the market to try to grab their share of the fat profits available. Chinese printers, anyone?

      The ugly truth of the matter is that the consumer end of the inkjet market sucks because anyone who prints a lot will get screwed. The corollary is that if you print a lot, don't buy a consumer ink jet. Or refill your own using the manufacturer's bulk sizes. For instance, the ink formulations for a B8850/B9180 are the same as the Z2100 series, which are 70mL carts. Buying one of those and refilling the tiny (15mL) B series works great.

    3. Re:No sensible, honest person would work for HP? by Bruce+Perens · · Score: 5, Insightful

      While I was a senior manager at HP, I got a pretty good idea of the size of printer R&D. It wasn't so big that it cost 1/100 of what they make from ink. But I did get figures on HP margins, which were essentially whatever they could get, not really held to any multiple of internal costs.

      The printer market won't change as long as any company that makes printers has to license patents from the others. Eventually that day will end and you might get fair ink prices.

      --
      Bruce Perens.
  11. Printers are evil. by elsJake · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Printers represent the most dreaded part of an IT guy's work day. HP being one of the top time wasters.
    I don't understand why but printers are the shittiest products you can find , every manufacturer insists on having their own way of dealing with drivers and hp being king at bloatware.
    Then there's the windows printing system that absolutely sucks balls.
    When it's not the drivers it some sort of failure in the paper loading mechanism or the optical paper detection sensor.
    There's no standardized way of remotely managing them , no way to tell if they're working properly or _WHY_ they fail to print when they do.
    All i want from these cretins is ONE reasonably priced , reliable printer that would work with bare-bone drivers , have a proper network printing system and management interface and not SUCK so much that i can't deal with actual problems.

    All in all this whole thing about R&D is just bullshit , if they'd spend less time building up so many new printer models that have no significant technical advantage , just that they look different and require new drivers the size of an operating system service pack they'd probably have enough cash to stop ripping us off on ink.