With home printers being such a big segment of the computer peripheral sales industry, it has made me wonder recently just who is printing out all these pictures? There are some customers that are using those high-end digital cameras to turn captured pictures into 4x6 prints for that scrapbook or album. But, from my experience with almost everyone I see and come into contact these days, most are taking more pictures than ever -- but are sharing all those images via email and online picture hosting sites.

So, who is printing all these pictures in record amounts? Somebody is, as HP, Kodak and Lexmark are selling millions of inkjet consumer printers. In fact, Eastman Kodak Company (NYSE:EK) has announced that two of its "EasyShare All-in-One" printers are now available at consumer electronics retailer Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY).

These Kodak printers seem to be designed to replace the process of taking pictures with a digital camera and then taking the camera or memory card to a printing kiosk to have hard copies made. In other words, Kodak's lateness to the party regarding the consumer transition from film cameras to digital cameras is being attacked by its ferocity in the digital camera and consumer printer markets. This is a good thing -- and I hope it's enough to bring Kodak back from the brink.

I'm a fan of Clayton Christensen and have read a few of his books on business market disruption -- including The Innovator's Dilemma which focuses on the hard drive industry in the last 30 years or so. When he writes a piece on disruption, it's generally a very good piece and more often than not, what he talks about comes true in some form.

When Christensen talked about the rise of RIM a few years ago, it made sense -- make a portable email device that performs one function, and performs it very well. Since then, RIM's BlackBerry phones have taken the market by storm and competitors like the Palm Treo and Windows Mobile units took years to catch up. In other words, quality wins over quantity -- we all don't need Swiss army knife-type portable computers with us at all times -- but many of us need mobile access to email at almost all times. RIM knows that I am sure.

So, with Kodak's new plan to lower the prices of consumer inkjet printer ink to tolerable levels ($10 to $20 per cartridge), will the printing and imaging divisions of larger competitors like HP get hurt as a result? HP, Lexmark and others sell consumer inkjet printers at cost (or even at a loss) in order to make the margin up on inkjet cartridges with incredibly huge markups (not really new news.)

If Kodak is to compete on the price level of consumer inkjet printers and undercut the profit centers of the competitors with cut-rate pricing on ink cartridges, could this disrupt the marketplace for consumer printers and their prices? Sure it could, although it's too early to see if Kodak's strategy will work. If it does and Kodak implements this strategy long-term, look for competitors to either follow suit or raise consumer-level printer hardware prices to compensate.