Copier/Printing Tidbits

Little bits and pieces on the copier/printing industry:

Hewlett Packard continues to crack down on companies making fake supplies for its printers:
- Estimates that the company lost more than $1 billion in revenue to illegal counterfeits
- Nearly 60% of the company’s profits come from print cartridges
- Cartridge sales have tumbled 21% this year down to $11.9 billion
- HP’s stock is down 5%
- Entire industry estimates that it loses $3 billion in revenue to illegal cartridges
- Average cost of ink for printers is $8000 per gallon
- International Chamber of Commerce estimates counterfeiting cost businesses $600 billion in 2007 or 6% of global trade
- 10% of tech products sold globally are counterfeit according to study by KPMG
- Worldwide ink market grew from $11 billion 10 years ago to $45 billion last year
- Profit margins on printer ink ran as high as 60%
- IDC predicts that number of printed pages will decline for the first time this year to 1.47 trillion pages from 1.5 trillion in 2008
- HP tracked one source of illegal cartridges to Foshan City, China and raided 14 warehouses, seizing $88 million in equipment, supplies and packaging materials.

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Okidata now shipping two versions of the same new desktop color LED printer, the MC560n and CX2033:
- Both are 20ppm color and 32ppm b/w
- MC560n has MSRP of $999, but uses more expensive supplies
- CX2033 has MSRP of $2500, but uses less expensive cost per page supplies


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The National Association of Print Leaders (NAPL) economists announced:
- Total production hours are down 14.2%
- 80% of printshops report that payroll hours were lower than a year ago
- 41.5% of shops report that productivity is lower
- Commercial print sales are down 15%
- 80% report decline in output


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Corporate United, a national group purchasing organization of Fortune 1000 and Global 2000 companies, announced that for the third time, it has awarded Konica Minolta its “Supplier of the Year” award.



A couple of thoughts on the info above; as those of us in the industry have proclaimed for a long time, inkjet is the most costly form of printing. When ink accounts for 60% of the profits for a hardware company, that says a lot. Also confirming that is the Okidata report that you now have a choice. Pay me now or pay me later...If you don't plan on doing a lot of printing then you can go cheap printer/expensive ink or if you will be doing a lot of printing costlier printer/cheaper ink. Does any one see anything wrong with this picture?

Finally, just bragging again as Konica Minolta takes down another consumer award; sorry, just couldn't help myself.