*NEWS*HP GOES OUTSIDE THE BOX………….

[Anonymous]

HP Goes Outside the Box to Save Print Dominance
Hewlett-Packard keeps pace with market demands as smaller printer rivals jockey for position.
Four times a year, Gartner and a host of other technology research firms issue updated surveys
on the printing business—looking at total units shipped and breaking
out market-share.Because of HP’s longstanding dominance in printing,
these surveys can often read like a report on how far the number two
and number three players are behind HP.In its most current survey, for
instance, Gartner shows that HP held the leading market-share in page
printers, inkjet printers and inkjet MFPs (multifunction printers), the
all-in-one machines that combine printing, copying, faxing and scanning
functions, and are currently one of the growth engines of the printing
business.So great is HP’s lead in the inkjet MFP market, for example,
that as of the third quarter of 2007 (the latest period for which data
is available), it held a 51 percent share of the market, while its
nearest competitor, Lexmark, had just a 20 percent market-share. The
number three player, Canon, had just 9 percent of the market.

HP’s
dominance tends to overshadow the more incremental progress of smaller
companies, such as Lexmark, which grew its share of the inkjet
all-in-one printer market to 20 percent by the third quarter of 2007,
up from 17 percent in 2006. Canon also boosted its share of the key
inkjet all-in-one printer market, to 9 percent in the third quarter of
2007, from 8 percent in 2006, according to the Gartner numbers.”HP is
running over everybody,” says Jeff Embersits, an analyst with
Shareholder Value Management. “I would not want to be another player in
that market right now.”The printing industry is in a state of flux
these days as consumers and businesses seek better, more efficient ways
to print real-time and personalized materials and neither HP nor any of
its smaller rivals expect the status quo to continue for long.HP, whose
printing business once focused on the sale of printing machines and ink
cartridges, is increasingly working to integrate software and services
into the business to help create new ways to sell to customers who are
no longer satisfied with a 5 x 7 glossy image, but want that image
embossed on a holiday card or small business marketing material that
looks professionally produced.

Some of HP’s smallest
competitors, meanwhile, see the shifting industry trends as an
opportunity to reinvent the wheel and offer consumers better ways to do
their basic printing.Last year, while HP forged deeper into printing
software and services, Eastman Kodak announced that it would enter the
inkjet printer business for the first time with a new model—with ink
cartridges that Kodak claims will cost less than half of what bigger
players like HP charge. Ink cartridges are the proverbial razor blades
of the printer business that reliably generate revenue long after the
printer itself is sold.

Kodak’s claims can be hard to prove
since a printer cartridge lasts for shorter or longer periods of time
depending on the materials being printed and the type of paper that is
used. Kodak’s early results show that consumers are intrigued though.
The company sold out of all the new printers it had available during
the fourth quarter.Are consumers tired of the old “cheap printer,
expensive cartridge” model? “I think they are,” says Robert Toomey, an
analyst with E.K. Riley Investments in Seattle.Likely a bigger key to
future leadership in the printing business will be the introduction of
new digital printing technologies, which currently encompass just 10
percent of the printing business in the United States. These
technologies are critical to printing the sort of personalized and
on-demand materials that are driving so much printing today.HP says a
deeper push into digital printing is central to its overall printing
strategy, as well as its strategy for retaining a lead over the
competition.

[Author]

April 16, 2008 at 2:46 PM