BA
The Old Man's Gonna Roll the Hard Six
Premium,MVM
join:2001-05-24
Vancouver, BC
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|  reply to CS_Buddy
Re: Epson C42UX - Refill Cartridge Protection
said by CS_Buddy  :
I think this chip is just another way of forcing the customers to shell out for genuine Epson cartridges, instead of buying mockup or refilling them. THIS article supports that assertion. It makes me really mad, because the printer itself isn't a lot of money, but the maintenance is. There are ways to lessen the cost, but of course, the companies don't want you to. Even if Epson isn't making money off you, someone else is. Heck, even Future Shop sells a rebranded ink cartridge (Cicero) and most places will "recycle" your ink cartridges or even give you something (free paper) for them. There isn't money to be made? Yeah right. Money grubbing b*stards...
Of course the Epson chip is designed to make money - it's no secret nor have they been denying it. The printer market is a crowded (even worse now that Dell [Epson/Lexmark] is entering) dog eat dog world for printer manufacturers. Epson is not making anything off of your CAD$50. In fact, there's a very good chance they're in the red ink for selling you that printer. Just a few years ago, a printer of the same class would have sold for around $250. So why have things like scanners for instance dropped so much in price? Printers involve a huge supply chain cost because of SKUs they have to proliferate for all the printers. Factor in manufacturing and advertising costs and you'll notice that printers are quite inexpensive. To gain ink shares, brand/product recognition, awareness, etc. lowering the price is the only way. So, the only dependable stream of revenue is from selling high-margin printer consumables.
The aftermarket supplies industry isn't helping either. It used to take 18 months for them to come out with compatibles for early Epson cartridges. With the last few generations of supplies, aftermarket competitors have cut down the learning curve and cut their time-to-market down to around six months. Epson's strategy to maximize its ink share is to roll its cartridges with every new printer lineup to keep one step ahead of the aftermarket. But the downside of this strategy is SKU proliferation, which causes Epson to incur more supply chain costs and to lose more ink share on older SKUs as they are forced from the shelves in favor of newer SKUs. So it's never ending battle. |
