*NEWS*A NEW GENERATION OF H.P. INK CTGS

[Anonymous]

HP Brands Ink, Launches New Generation of Ink Cartridges

From The Hard Copy Supplies Journal, January 2005, Lyra Research, Inc.

In what it Called its “Big Bang 3” product announcement,HP introduced a product lineup that includes five new photo printers, four Deskjet printers,and three new photo all-in-ones. Also included in the announcement were six new ink cartridges that use an ink formulation that HP has branded with the name Vivera. HP claims its new Vivera inks, when used with HP Premium Plus photo paper, can produce printed images that last more than 100 years.

In addition to branding its ink with the Vivera name, HP took a step that is guaranteed to irritate the many remanufacturers of its ink cartridges: HP has regionalized the new printers and the cartridges they use. According to Boris Elisman, vice president of marketing and sales for HP’s Imaging Supplies Business, the rationale for this was twofold. “We’ve customized our printers and the supplies to meet the differing needs of customers in various parts of the world,” says Elisman, adding that a secondary reason was to keep pricing stable in terms of world currency, an obvious reference to the practice of gray marketing.

HP has always had regional ink jet cartridge packaging, promotions, and channel packaging, along with different legal disclosures and different strategies for recycling and Internet ordering of replacement supplies. The difference between the previous program and the new program is that the cartridge-numbering scheme, or what HP calls “selectability numbers,” will be different for each region. According to Elisman, these selectability numbers are burned into the electronics of each cartridge so that a cartridge purchased in one region cannot be used in a printer that was purchased in a different region. For example, a printer designed for sale in North America cannot use cartridges purchased in Western Europe.

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February 3, 2005 at 10:22 AM