HP Stops Selling Printers, Starts Selling Prints 346
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."
What a pity (Score:5, Insightful)
How innovative (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If selling ink doesn't work, how about the prin (Score:3, Insightful)
cartridge refills (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And this is.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Seriously, HP did the R&D to make this thing so they dictate the terms. Don't like the leasing arrangement? Don't lease one.
Re:Wow... (Score:4, Insightful)
Which means it's not such a bad decision - businesses seem to like things like this, where the only responsibility to them is to have static per-page cost of the printer.
Products vs. Service (Score:1, Insightful)
Service is great if you don't want the headache of maintaining the equipment.
Products are great if you don't want want to wait on someone to fix it.
This is leasing vs. purchasing. It's more expensive to lease, but allows for less headaches.
To each their own. I think it's a smart financial move with HP. I don't purchase the printers required to print my photography prints.
Re:What a pity (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Misleading Summary Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Edgeline technology is said to be so ink-efficient (Score:5, Insightful)
COMPANY: Our technology is so good we can't even sell it. But of course if you are willing to pay a premium we might consider it....
COSTOMER: Oh, wow. This shit has to be good if they can't sell it. We have to see if HP will sell it to _us_. We'll even offer them to pay extra.
COMPANY: Suckers...!
Reminds of when I went shopping for cars with my uncle in Odessa, Ukraine. This guy was selling used cars. At the end of the lot he had a car covered under a sheet. My uncle asks, what's model you have there. He said "That's not for sale." He then proceeded to tell us how that was a special model blah blah blah. Then my uncle talked him into selling it, payed extra for the 'special' features. Then as we drove away it, the salesman took the sheet and put it on the car right next to it. Seems like HP is doing the same thing here...
Re:And this is.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Another company will come out with a similarly efficient printer that they WILL sell, and HP won't get squat.
I respectfully disagree (Score:5, Insightful)
HP is allowed to sell their goods any way they wish. That is capitalism at work.
The catch is, so are their competitors.
How long before you see a Lexmark with this exact same technology at work? Do you think they'll go on a services model? Do you think absolutely everyone in the market will? Even the guys in China?
And when someone finally does start selling the same printer technology rather than leasing it, what will HP have to do to keep up?
Re:Misleading Summary Title (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I respectfully disagree (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe it's just high-maintenance (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the problem with the thing is that it takes significant maintenance support. Xerox copiers and printers back in the selenium drum era were leased, because they cost so much and required considerable skilled maintenance. If this new technology has that problem, a lease-only approach at introduction makes sense.
Competition Comes from Older Models (Score:5, Insightful)
For example, I'd have a quite nice office class networked, duplexing, HP laserjet 4si printer nestled under my desk at home. It's a 200lb beast that keeps on printing. The $100 cartridges last a year. I got it for $200 off ebay and $50 for a service kit. To buy something similar new would cost me $4-$5k. I expect that it will keep going for years.
Just as test equipment manufacturers know about their old scopes, HP knows that one of it's biggest competitors is not other printer manufacturers, but the installed base of high quality, high reliability, maintainable workhorse printers they sold in the past.
Leasing printing services rather than selling printers means they never suffer from this new model surviving 15 years down the road, competing with their new new model.
Re:If selling ink doesn't work, how about the prin (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What a pity (Score:3, Insightful)
Flamebait summary... (Score:3, Insightful)
TFA didn't say that, and I don't see any source for it. What TFA did say was that it will "lower colour operating costs by up to 30 percent".
30% isn't exactly enough to make inkjet cartridge sales worthless, now is it?
Re:That's why you don't buy HP (Score:3, Insightful)
Better society!? (Score:2, Insightful)
Better society? Are you kidding me? You're expecting a printer company to go out and better society? Before you start frothing at the mouth at the 'capitalist pigs' trying to make money on their products, consider this: if creating these printers makes them no money, HP will not manufacture them at all. It's not in their interest to offer a product that will put them out of business.
Yes, it's possible that the efficiency of the printer would cause HP to lose money from ink sales of cartridges for this printer. But did it ever occur to you that such efficient technology might cost a lot more to develop and manufacture? The company needs to recoup costs for these aspects too. Like it or not, they are not creating these printers out of the goodness of their hearts. They're doing it in order to run a business. Maybe someone else will take it upon him or herself to create some magical free printer for the masses, but I doubt it.
Lastly, these products don't seem designed to be used in the home. That isn't the market that HP is after. When you purchase a contract for one of these machines, it's not like buying a printer--it's like buying a miniature Kinko's that you put in your office and pay as you go for the service. You don't even have to maintain it, if I understand the article correctly. HP does it for you. Sounds like a deal that many companies would be interested in, but if they're not? Nobody's going to make them buy it. There are plenty of printers for sale on the market. Customer demand will determine whether or not this business model is successful--if someone buys it, there must be someone out there who wants it.
Not news (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:That's why you don't buy HP (Score:3, Insightful)
Very good linux drivers?
Ditch ink, get a laser. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't you just buy a laser printer?
I can't believe anyone with a clue is still using ink-based printers, with lasers being the price they are now. You can get a fairly inexpensive Samsung or maybe even an HP laser printer for $100 - 150, sometimes on sale for under 100, and with a full toner cartridge get thousands of pages out of it.
They're so far superior to ink-based printers that I just don't understand why anyone wouldn't use them. The only thing they don't do, or that you have to pay a significant amount extra for, is color. But really, for the occasional color print you can keep one of those more-expensive-than-liquid-gold ink printers around if you really need it. Or pay the $250 or $300 to get a color laser (and probably step up to something that'll do duplexing).
Inkjet printers need to die, as a technology. The only niche market they deserve to keep is for photo printing for the terminally impatient and un-quality-conscious folks who can't or don't want to drive down to their local CVS/WalMart and use a lightjet.
Memjet response? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Broken model? (Score:5, Insightful)
You are missing something here. In the 1970s a lot of these companies were newer and therefore not completely used to screwing over the customer quite yet. Unfortunately the way corporations operate is by constantly cutting margins and finding new ways to screw the consumer. The problem is that investors want the company to put out more profits while making the same product with, in some cases, the same marketshare. So if your company is making one thing en masse, and everyone pretty much already has one and is satisfied etc, that's a dry market. No growth. No growth, no investors. No investors in public corporate speak and no money, no money, no company. The end result, companies have to keep cutting margins on old things especially if they have few new products, because they have to turn more and more profits. The model is flawed. Every cost must eventually be cut and that's why all major printer makers now follow this model.
Re:Misleading Summary Title (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How innovative (Score:3, Insightful)
Xerox is doing the same thing. IBM is doing the same thing, different way.
We are in a post-industrial world. The industrial revolution brought us dirty factories and practically slave labor and goods for cheap. For the most part, industry is done in China now. However, some goods are still made here in the US because its cheaper to make them here than to ship them here for things like cars, but most of the doodads you buy are made in china or some other asian country.
The big to do is not in making things, but the service sector. IBM, Xerox, now HP are all moving in that direction. Heck, even GM now makes more money off of financing than they do off of making cars. To me, its strange. It proves to me that humans are becoming more worthless by the minute by their own smartness and laziness in getting stuff done.
A little over 100 years ago, most people worked in producing food. Now, nobody really does that. In fact, many farmers are paid not to produce food. Then it was industry. Now that is done, and moved overseas, now we just do services, but what in the world are we going to service? Food production? Industry? Those things are not here, I guess we can service service? Seems strange to me.
Re:Bad Headline (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Misleading Summary Title (Score:5, Insightful)
You see, the current copier leasing model charges you a monthly fee for having the copier, as well as charging you a per-copy rate for each copy you make. The copier has a counter (or two counters for those that keep track of mono and multi color copies separately) and either a technician comes out and physically reads the counter, you are called on the telephone to read off the counter numbers to the company rep, or in some cases, your copier is called directly via it's own connection to your line, and the counters are read without physical user interaction.
So your internet connection has nothing to do with it.
HP is just not going to sell these commercial copiers to the companies that want them. HP is only going to lease them, and then instead of charging a monthly fee, they are going to charge based on the number of prints. They will most likely get these totals by one of the methods I described above, or quite possibly even over an internet connection, but you can be assured they will not have only ONE method of getting these totals. There will be multiple methods available to them to get the total numbers of prints per month, as it is how they are saying they are going to charge their customers.
These are not going to be print services over the internet. You are not going to connect your company computers to an HP server where they mail you the prints you make.
Re:Misleading Summary Title (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)