Hewlett-Packard gives dumb printer products a higher IQ

By PETER GRIFFIN

Printer maker Hewlett-Packard is aiming to win ground in the softening printer market with a line up of printers, inks and media created to exploit shortcomings in rival products.

The company plans to bring to market a new range of printer cartridges incorporating "smart chips" that monitor the life of the cartridge, improve efficiency and ensure authenticity of the cartridge - an important issue in the Asia-Pacific region, where cheap cartridges and refill packs are common.

New digital cameras, and printers which accept memory cards in popular formats such as the Sony Memory Stick, are also scheduled for release, designed to avoid the need for home users to download pictures to a computer before printing them.

Hewlett-Packard scientists unveiling a new line-up of business inkjets and laser printers at last month's Lab2001 in Cyprus were keen to point out that the company had secured 16 ink and media patents in the past year, compared with its closest competitor, Epson, which secured seven.

Print media remains a strong focus for Hewlett-Packard.

The company is keen to grow its 42 per cent share of the North American market with photo products claiming better light-fastness than those produced by Kodak, Canon and Epson.

Online initiatives are aimed at encouraging customer loyalty. Hewlett-Packard printer customers can subscribe to an online ordering service which e-mails users when printer toner is getting low.

Alternatively, a reseller or printer servicing company can be contacted directly to arrange for the printer to be serviced.

Darian Bird, of market research firm IDC, said that in New Zealand, Hewlett-Packard had built on its strength in the home PC market, bundling a large number of inkjet printers with the Pavilion range of PCs.

"During 2000, the vendor accounted for 63.9 per cent of the mono laser printer market and 44.9 per cent of the inkjet market in New Zealand."

He said the market for laser printers would gain momentum with dropping prices.

"The colour laser market has been very dynamic during recent quarters. Several vendors have focused more resources on this market, resulting in the release of a variety of new models.

"As colour lasers become cheaper and increase in availability to new markets, this will be the primary driver of growth in the New Zealand printer market."

Conspicuously absent from the future Hewlett-Packard product line-up was news of improvements to the company's Jornada range of PDAs (personal digital assistants).

A revamp of the range has long been expected, as Hewlett-Packard has failed to establish itself alongside incumbents Palm and Compaq - and the moderately successful Handspring - in the PDA market.

But mobile computing is inter-twined with Hewlett-Packard's future printing strategy.

Applications are being prepared for the Jornada that will allow customers to walk up to an internet-enabled printer and "beam" an url at the device.

The printer will access the internet, connect to the user's personal portal and retrieve the information ready for printing.