TCPglobal - news, views and issues on total cost of printing

Issue #0910/1 – As follow-up to the TCPglobal article "Printer manufacturers are keen to encourage printer sales by any means necessary and – is Lexmark breaking the law in the process?", printer users are able to take advantage of a wide range of special offers from Hewlett-Packard around the world, notably in the US where cashback rebates as high as $1,000 are available on laser printers. The breadth and scale of the offers further underline the desperation of printer manufacturers to keep product moving, prevent a build-up of inventory and ensure that the effect of the current financial downturn on revenue and market share is minimised.

Issue #0909/2 – Having listed new models released within about the last quarter in the previous article, "Bumper season for new business printers and multifunction devices", in this article we pick the mono laser printer category for investigation, where we see two brand new models at 30ppm in the market and several others of similar speed that were launched in the few months previously. The line-up here is: the new Brother HL-5350DN, Epson AcuLaser M2000DN, Hewlett-Packard LaserJet P2055dn, the new Kyocera FS-1350DN, Oki B430dn and Xerox Phaser 3250DN. Only the M2000 and Phaser 3250 were launched before November 2008.

Issue #0909/1 – These last few months (end 2008/early 2009) has been a bumper season for printer and MFP launches, with at least 57 discrete models representing 21 families (see table below). Several of the new machines have already been mentioned in previous articles, while some more investigation of others will follow shortly. With the exception of three of the inkjet models, all these new additions are definitively business oriented, underlining the need for printer manufacturers to capture high volumes of printed pages by targeting business usage rather than consumers.

Issue 0908/2 – Kyocera’s recent launch of its TASKalfa range of colour MFPs presents an exceptionally user-friendly and versatile device to the market, reinforces the company’s commitment to environmentally friendly products and low Total Cost of Printing and lays to rest historical concerns over print quality from the company’s office products.

Issue #0908/1 – Over the past few weeks the desperation of printer manufacturers to keep volumes of new printers flowing has become increasing clear. Almost every day, new emails arrive from resellers containing details of discounts and special offers on a variety of models. Manufacturers are also offering a range of benefits directly, almost all of which are currently scheduled to expire at the end of March.