Kodak plans to break the ink cartel with cheaper ink
Rochester, NY - February 6, 2007
Kodak announced Tuesday that it plans to bring out a new line of consumer inkjet printers with cheaper ink. “After today, the inkjet market will never be the same,” said Antonio M. Perez, chairman and chief executive officer, Eastman Kodak Company. Kodak’s ink will sell for about $25 when the printers hit stores in March—that’s much less than the $60 to $80 it typically costs for replacement ink for photo inkjet printers.
In a Kodak news release, Perez went on to say, “We are changing the rules in this industry to ensure that consumers can affordably print what they want, when they want, easily and at the high level of Kodak quality they’ve come to expect.”
“For far too long, people have felt restrained from printing due to the high cost of ink,” Perez said. “For years, the high price of inkjet cartridges has kept consumers from freely using their printers. With affordable premium inks, families can now create crisp documents and KODAK lab-quality photos at home.”
Beginning in March, Kodak will introduce two All-in-One (AiO) EasyShare printers (the 5100 for $149.99 and the 5300 for $199.99 - shown here with it’s 3-inch color LCD display). A third EasyShare AiO printer (the 5500 for $299.99) will arrive in May, and add fax functionality, an automatic document feeder and a duplexer attachment.
All three new printers will be using Kodak’s new premium, pigment-based inks, which are part of their exclusive Kodacolor Technology. This technology is a combination of four key elements?pigment-based inks, micro-porous photo papers, color and image science, and their Micro-Electro-Mechanical-Systems (MEMS) print head. Kodak claims their technology will enable consumers to affordably print crisp, sharp documents and Kodak lab-quality photos at home, with a savings of up to 50 percent off the competition.
The Kodak EasyShare AiO printers use Kodak’s premium, pigment-based ink, priced at $9.99 for a cartridge of black ink and $14.99 for a five-ink color cartridge. For every $15 spent on color ink and $10 spent on black ink, consumers can print the same number of pages at half the cost of other consumer inkjet printers. When the Kodak Photo Value Pack is purchased, a 4x6-inch photo costs as little as 10 cents per print. This compares to the 29 cents per print that Epson costs when using their PictureMate Print Packs.
USA Today recently reported that HP holds a 41% share of the inkjet printer market, followed by Epson with 18%, Canon with 17%, Lexmark with 13%, and Dell with only 6%. They also reported that manufacturers can make as much as 75% profit on the sale of ink cartridges, and that printer ink is a $32 billion market worldwide.
Although Kodak lost $600 million in 2006, their positive showing in the last quarter (after eight consecutive quarterly losses) has been attributed to their efforts in making the transition into digital (see related story).
Posted by Royce Bair on 02/07 at 12:13 PM
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