Connecticut-based Xerox Corp. introduced color printers and ink products last week that it said will cut the price of color copying by two-thirds, sweeping away a major hurdle for customers seeking to enter the profitable and growing color market.
Color printing and copying are increasingly attractive to U.S. and overseas businesses that want an edge in marketing and other presentations. But the high cost of color production has hindered efforts by Xerox to make greater inroads in the market, the Stamford office equipment manufacturer said.
“We’re making color more accessible, more affordable and easier to use for offices large and small around the world,” Jim Rise, vice president and general manager of Xerox’s solid ink products business unit, told investors in a webcast Monday.
The company’s new printers and updated solid-ink technology will reduce the price of color copying and printing to the cost of black-and-white printing, boosting Xerox’s drive for more customers in the highly competitive color market, he said.
“Our feedback from customers and third-party research is that color is too expensive,” Rise said before the announcement. “That’s the barrier to broad use of color in the office.”
The new printers use longer-lasting crayon-like ink sticks that will help reduce the cost of printing, the company said. In development for nearly five years, the new ink sticks are now larger and more dense.
Same As B&W
Together with the new machines, the ink will cut the cost of color copying and printing from the 15 cents a page to 5 cents — the price of black-and-white printing.
The new products target businesses with print volume of between 2,000 and 10,000 pages a month, firms such as real estate agencies, marketing companies, design agencies and contractors that use color printing for business proposals, reports, photographs and presentations.
Rise said the two printers will cost $2,499 and $3,999, or about $900 more than equipment handling the same volume sold by competitors. However, with the lower cost of ink, the higher equipment price will be recovered in five months, Xerox says.
But Tom Codd, director of outbound marketing for Hewlett-Packard Co.’s LaserJet business, predicted the Xerox printers will be more expensive to operate because the crayon-like ink sticks must be melted before each use. Hewlett-Packard doesn’t use wax-based ink systems in its printers.
“They’re certainly taking a different approach to the printing market,” Codd said.
