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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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