How Does The Inkjet Industry Work
There are lots of big names in the inkjet industry. The companies who have made inkjet printers a household item are the big 4: Hewlett Packard, Canon, Epson and Lexmark. All of these companies made the humble inkjet cartridge a household item for many years to come.
With the prices of inkjet printers dropping almost every week these companies are competing more and more for their share of the inkjet consumer and business market. Most people don’t realize that the profits these companies generate is not from the actual sale of the printers but from the sale of the ink jet cartridges and other printer supplies and accessories. If you think of what a normal ink jet cartridge costs - $30 or $40. Each of these ink cartridges only contains a few milliliters of ink. A gallon of printer ink costs almost $10,000 so as you can imagine a lot of this is pure profit.
The profits that comes from providing replacement OEM inkjet cartridges to consumers is one of the main reasons the Big 4 are so concerned with the widespread availability of discount printer ink. This cuts directly into their bottom line and they really don’t want that.
The online and offline availability of compatible, remanufactured and refill inkjet cartridge products is great news for the consumer. It’s also great news for the more openminded manufacturers. In the early days of computing IBM was the cutting edge leader but their computers were so expensive only the true “geeks” could afford them. When IBM compatible and clone computers hit the market the home computer revolution really started. In a roundabout way the surge of third party inkjet cartridge products on the market is actually good news for the printer manufacturers helping them to sell more product to a waiting and rapidly expanding market.
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