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May 25, 2004
New Horizon in Printer Competition
Posted by Dana Blankenhorn
Buried deep in a story about Dell's printer strategy is a unique take that deserves applause.
I'll now hand it to The Register:
The 1700 toner cartridges are cheaper too, costing $89 for up to 6,000 pages – apparently a 35% cost-per-page saving, if compared to other companies' cartridges.
The dirty secret of the printer business is it's a razor blade business. The dirty secret of Lexmark is its move to use copyright laws to prevent others from selling ink to its customers. Ink is practically free (when compared with the price of the cartridges they come in).
Dell is going to make a huge profit at those ink prices, absolutely massive. But if other companies (like Lexmark) decide to challenge it, this could be the start of a price war consumers will get real benefit from.
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Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for over 25 years and has covered the online world professionally since 1985. He founded the "Interactive Age Daily" for CMP Media, and has written for the Chicago Tribune, Advertising Age, and dozens of other publications over the years.
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