Merrill Lynch & Co thinks Hewlett-Packard Co’s new $800 2000C color ink jet technology represents a breakthrough in price and performance and will revolutionize the color ink jet market. The 2000C incorporates a Modular Ink System and will ship in volume in June. HP’s technology will attack color laser printers first then move down into the consumer ink jet market. The company can offer 1,216 nozzles per printer versus about 320 for competitors, the brokerage says. HP is fending off ink tank cloners with a smart chip attached to the print head. The new technology separates the print heads from the ink tank, allowing users to replace the ink without replacing the expensive print head. HP claims its cost per page is 2.5 cents for 5% black coverage, 5.2 cents for 15% color coverage, and 7.7 cents for 20% color coverage. The report quotes IDC estimates suggesting the cost per page of 2.5 cents is down by roughly half for black coverage and will begin to rival the roughly 2 cent per page cost of traditional monochrome laser printers. It says HP estimates that the product costs 30%-50% less than other ink jets and many color lasers. Speed is good relative to other ink jets, but slow compared with laser at 8 ppm for mono and 2-3 ppm for full color. HP wants to take this system down through its ink jet line over time. HP came up with a smart chip attached to the print head to make the ink tank difficult to clone. Merrill Lynch says the smart chip memory device monitors print head use and health, providing on-screen information to the user. The cartridge and packaging carry three new legal statements, such as ‘intended for single use only.’ It believes cloning is possible but quotes a Lyra Research report stating that would-be cloners will have to reverse engineer the smart chip, develop inks that won’t destroy the heads, and clone the cartridge’s tank and connector system while avoiding HP’s patents. Sounds like a challenge if ever we heard one.
