COLOR TONERS FINALLY CATCHES ON…..

[Anonymous]

Chemical Toners Are the Focus as Color Finally Catches On
LYRA RESEARCH
After years of industry observers’ pronouncements that color adoption was just around the bend, the move is at last well underway. Most OEMs are actively responding to increased demand for color hardware, introducing more color laser printers and MFPs each month. As they introduce more color products, manufacturers have grown disenchanted with toners made using traditional mechanical processes because of the limited quality and performance they provide. As a result, much of today’s new hardware employs toner that was produced using chemical processes rather than by mechanical grinding.
Cortney Kasuba, a Lyra Research analyst who follows the toner cartridge market, says that the benefits of chemical toners are well understood in the marketplace and that OEMs have swiftly adopted them. “In 1999, none of the color laser printers that made up the top 10 machines in the North American installed base used chemical toner,” she says. “Last year, all 10 of these color laser models employed chemical toners.” Kasuba says that conventional toner will still be more widely used than chemical toner because of the large installed base of high-end production machines that use mechanical toner in enormous quantities. However, she asserts that all eyes are on the dynamic market for chemical toner, as this market represents where the industry is headed in terms of office and personal digital imaging equipment.
OEMs have eagerly embraced chemical color toner ever since this technology was first introduced in the late 1990s. Chemically produced toners offer a number of advantages over conventionally ground toner. Chemically produced particle shapes are smaller and more uniform, so they are capable of rendering better image quality. After the hefty initial capital outlay, producing toners chemically is also cheaper than making conventional toners and can be less ecologically taxing. Over the past year, a number of OEMs, including Canon and Konica Minolta in Japan and Xerox in North America, have announced that they are ramping up their production of chemical toner.

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November 29, 2005 at 11:18 AM