A press release dropped into my inbox today saying that Kodak are going to revolutionise the inkjet industry. It includes some great quotes such as
"After today, the inkjet market will never be the same...We are changing the rules in this industry"
Wow - sounds like my life is changing for the better. And what is the nature of this revolution? They are going to stop overcharging us for ink. It's so simple it's brilliant.
For a long time the pricing model for consumer level printers has been bizarre: give the printers away for less than cost price then charge more than anyone though possible for ink. There's a problem with this model - it doesn't work. Third parties produce "compatible" ink at a fraction of the cost and the printer manufacturer never recoups the money they lost on the printer. Even worse, if the 3rd party ink damages the printer (and a good brand is probably no more or less likely to do that than genuine ink) then the punter runs out and buys another printer because they are so cheap. Worse they may switch brand and post "Brand X suck" threads all over the Internet. There is no incentive to maintain printers or even investigate problems - just go and buy a new one. That's bad for the printer company and bad for the environment.
Canon and more recently Epson have sought to protect their investment in the obvious way. They have patented parts of the ink cartridges so that effectively it's illegal for 3rd parties to supply ink for them.
Now there are some very good reasons why genuine ink costs a lot of money.
- Longevity. It's relatively simple to make ink that's a good colour match for "original" ink but the additives that make it UV stable and stop it fading are complex and expensive. Tests by the Wilhelm Institute have shown that genuine inks can last over 100 years and 3rd parties can fade after a matter of months.
- R&D. Take the K3 Ultrachrome inkset from Epson. It uses 8 inks (of which only 7 are used on any one paper) and took time and effort to invent. There are also clever drivers to use the correct ink at all times. A 3rd party can come along and "copy" the ink for a fraction of the R&D cost.
- ROI. On my desk I have an Epson R220. It cost me £55 and has dozens of moving parts. When it broke down recently I took it down to my local Epson service centre where they fixed it under warranty. If they hadn't been able to fix it I would have got a new one. When you consider manufacturing, shipping and warranty costs plus retailer profit there is no way Epson could sell that for £55 - they plan to make some of the money back on ink.
However, one of the big reasons for high ink charges is profit. Epson, Canon, Kodak, HP and Lexmark are all in this to make money - they will charge as much as they can get away with.
So now Kodak comes up with a clever marketing idea - sell ink cheaper and you'll probably sell more of it. So simple it's brilliant. Note that my press release wasn't titled "better prints" or "fantastic new printers" as most of them are - it said this was a "new business strategy". They are just going to sell us the same stuff for less. Cool.
OK, so here's the real news. In May there will be a couple of new All In One printers which will scan, copy, fax and print. Of course they will do all of this better than any previous printer in their class. The difference is that to reink one will cost £17. To reink the Canon MP150 All In One from the Canon online store is currently £34. Ink for an Epson DX7000F all in one is £25.16. [Note: there are no figures available on how much ink is in each of these! Until we get review samples we won't know if the Kodak cartridges print as much as their competitors. However, Kodak figures claim that they are the same capacity and that print costs will be half as much as other manufacturers.]
Of course we'll be testing the new Kodak printers as soon as they are available and we will also make this change to our reviews. Printer review will from now on quote both the recommended retail price and the total cost of ownership for 1 year. This will take into account "average" printing using genuine media - that way you'll know whether a printer is a really good buy or not.
Kodak have also launched a tongue in cheek website called InkIsIt. With some allegedly hilarious games and handy pages about the real cost of ink. When I checked this morning there was a really irritating video on it but it looks like it has been pulled now. There is also a tool to work out how much ink you use.
