Digital Printing Technology Analysis: Inkjet and Toner

In the home and office environment, ink is generally considered by consumers to be a less durable but more interesting option, and from the point of view of the unit cost of printing per page, the price of ink is also relatively expensive, which was originally technically Limitations and some additional costs (inkjet printers used cartridges contain a large amount of electronic components) are determined, but have gradually evolved into economic and pricing models.

In general, the price of ink jet printers is deliberately kept at a lower level. The purpose is to “lock in” the customer so that it does not have more options when replacing ink. The profitability of the ink and low-end toner printer market is mainly determined by the razorandblades tying model. The pricing model developed by Gillette in the last century has now been fully mastered by printer dealers. Its principle is that the selling price of the basic product is extremely low, and it is usually at a loss. The price of the related consumables or services is very expensive. For example, razors (bait) and blades (hook), cell phones (bait) and talk time (hook), printers (bait) and cartridges (hook), cameras (bait) and photos (hook), and so on. There is also an interesting variant of this model: Software developers distribute their text readers for free, but their text editors are priced at a few hundred dollars.

In the past few years, Kodak has been trying to change this model. They have increased the price of the printer and reduced the price of ink. In addition, Lexmark introduced a 500-page ink cartridge for $4.99, while HP launched a vigorous "Office inkjet" campaign that the company claims can achieve the same benefits as laser printers while reducing page unit costs. The same quality level, which fully proves that the ink manufacturing and distribution costs are actually lower than toner.

It is recalled that Hewlett-Packard Company once considered “a large number of sales of ink” as its business strategy to enter the high-end production and commercial printing market. However, the key issue is not how much ink they can sell, but at what price. And, in fact, the profits of traditional inks are already huge, and the increasingly fierce competition means that inks that are cheaper than toner can ultimately help printer vendors and printing companies.

Many industry experts are currently very optimistic about the development of inkjet technology. Because toner technology's position in the printing market is like the role of thermal printing in point-of-sale advertising - they are the market's biggest players, but they are close to the pinnacle of development, and further down can only be With fine-tuning costs, it is impossible to make significant progress.

The inkjet technology is just the opposite. With a series of improvements in technology and performance, it has stepped into the "golden age" of its own development. In the field of production printing, especially in color production printing, ink also has a long-term advantage because of its greater potential. As long as the formula and cost-effectiveness of the new ink can meet the needs of today's customers, it will certainly be able to change the competitive landscape of the printing industry.

From all perspectives, toner is in a leading position, and ink is struggling to catch up. We now have reason to believe that this will be a very exciting game!