IBM Corp today makes good on its threat to re-enter the mass printer market in competition with its offspring Lexmark International Inc. The new IBM Network Printer family comprises three black and white printers, running at 24 pages, 17 pages and 12 pages a minute and one color printer. The print engines are coming from Canon Inc and Fuji Xerox Ltd. IBM’s unique selling proposition is that the same printer fits all. You don’t need different versions for the Macintosh and for Windows, and they are also attachable to IBM’s mainframes. They will be sold through a network of resellers including the IBM Personal Computer Co and the IBM Printing Systems Co’s distributors. Prices were not available as we went to press, but IBM would say only that they’d be competitive. Unlike IBM Corp, Hewlett Packard and Apple Computer Inc, Lexmark makes its own print engines. Lexmark says IBM offered to buy the engines for its new printers from Lexmark, but the latter declined, saying that the forecast IBM gave it would keep its factory busy only a few weeks out of the year.
