Xerox (XRX) battles Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) in printer market

Posted Sep 24th 2007 11:34AM by Michael Rainey
Filed under: Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Xerox Corp (XRX)

It's amazing how cheap printers are these days. I have a Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) printer that prints in color and also scans and copies like a champ. And it cost less than $100 at Target. The only problem with cheap machines like this is that they start getting expensive when it's time to refill the ink. Of course, this is how companies like HP make their money: cheap hardware, expensive maintenance.

This strategy has invited competitors to take a different approach. Earlier this year, Eastman Kodak Co. (NYSE: EK) unveiled new printers that cost a bit more upfront but use much cheaper ink. Today, Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) announced that it will sell a new printer that costs more than a laser printer but produces color copies for the same cost as black and white. If you've ever had to buy new color ink cartridges, you know that this is a big improvement.

The new machine uses Xerox's solid-ink technology that reduces per page costs by as much as 80%, according to today's New York Times. Kodak has found that people print more when they know that pages, especially color pages, are cheaper. Some analysts are skeptical that companies are willing to abandon HP for cheaper color copies, and that HP's 40% market share is safe. But a test program for the new Xerox machine at a real estate company that prints lots of color brochures found that annual copying and printing costs were reduced from $1 million to $200,000. I think a lot of companies will have trouble saying no to savings like that.

Tags: hewlett-packard, hpq, ink, inthenews, printers, xerox, xrx

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

9-24-2007 @ 12:22PM

Joel Newton said...

I have a HP D145. It's one of the ones that prints/copies/scans/faxes in B/W or color. It is a piece of junk. It seems every time you let it sit for a month, the "print drivers" go bad --- $120.00. It's been a somewhat more than yearly frequency -- maybe once every 10 months. It was nearly $500.00 when new (on sale). It will be a cold day in hell when I own another HP product.

9-28-2007 @ 11:15PM

Richard said...

Greetings;

Sorry you are unhappy with your HP 145. Great machine. Perhaps your should give it a little more exercise.

If you leave your car in the garage for a long time, the gas goes bad and the battery dies. If you take a well bread, healthy dog and put it in a cage for a month, it won't perform. Maybe you should exercise your printer a little more often.

And by the way, the print drivers are software and have no shelf life. Plus, the print drivers are a free download from HP's web site.

Suggest you exercise your printer a little more.

r

10-10-2007 @ 12:09PM

John said...

We are getting away from HP, our company currently has 50 laserjets and one of the recent purchases was on a couple hp5550 priced around 4k. I cannot print legal sized envelops and an HP representative basically told me NO HP laserjets will print Legal envelops and she would put that in writing. This person is from there Executive Team of support. The documentation states otherwise so we will see where this goes.