HP Canon & Epson Ink, Lexmark, Brother Toner cartridge Printer Ink Cartridges News

Lexmark reported their second quarter results yesterday and disappointed stock market analysts. What is interesting for us at Stinkyink Towers is in the detail of the reports. The main shortfal for Lexmark was in the consumer sector which declined 8% in the period. Going forward, the main thrust for business will be in the industries key areas of Colour Laser, Laser Multi-Function products and inkjet all-in-ones. Improving product costs will be another focus for the company.

The business market segment performed about as expected and won some major banking contracts in South America especially. Cash flow for the quarter was also very strong giving the company a strong financial position and balance sheet.

Looking forward into Q3 of 2007 the company expects revenue to be down in the low to mid digit percentage range year over year and is expecting tough competition especially from the likes of HP, Epson and now in the US Kodak.

There is still much speculation that Lexmark could be a very tempting take over target and we will be watching this space with much interest

So the battle between inkjet printers and laserjet printers has spilled out of the print speed and convenience medium and onto the Power Highway.

According to research conducted by Techlogg.com the amount of power consumed by different printers varies enormously according to the technology used in the printer. For instance when they compared a Lexmark E230 Mono Printer with a Canon S800 inkjet printer and found huge differences in the amount of power consumed by the printer when actually printin. This is hardly suprising due to the technology involved in the laser printer. The high-voltage corona-discharge/primary charge roller mechanism laser printers use to print requires plenty of electricity, but also enables the printer to print far more quickly than the inkjet printer.

They concluded ‘Whilst sitting quietly, our test unit pulled 5.9-watts but start printing and that high-voltage charge mechanism really sucks on the power cord, eating through 699.2-watts for brief periods during each page print.

By contrast, we tested a late-model Canon S800 individual ink-tank inkjet printer and even when printing, it only consumed 13.1-watts on average, pushing up to 19-watts when the paper-loading stepper motors kick in.

When in standby mode, it pulls just 1.3-watts and when powered up but not printing, the power consumption only rises to 4.9-watts, similar to that of our test laser printer.

In terms of energy efficiency in printing, inkjet printers leave laser printers for dead but for the rest of the time, the standby power consumption is very similar.

VERDICT: Inkjet printers use up to 90% less power than laser printers while printing but things are pretty much even in standby mode.’.

I would like time to compare the actual cost per page of each printer, because the laser will spit out probably 4 - 5 times the amount of printing that the inkjet will in the same time, thus the inkjet will use more power over the longer period required to match the laserjet output. As usual with Green issues, more questions than answers!

You can read the original article here

Forbes Magazine reports that Lexmark International is clinging to its last lifeline.

On Monday, the beleaguered printer manufacturer dramatically slashed its forecast for the second quarter amid weak sales and increased competition.

The company now expects to earn 62 to 67 cents per share in the second quarter, including a 5 cent tax-related benefit but excluding restructuring-related benefits. That range is at least 20 cents below the previous forecast range of 82 to 92 cents and far below the Street’s call of 86 cents a share.

The fact that the inkjet industry is under pressure is nothing new, but the size of Lexmark’s miss is certainly eyebrow raising. Further, a Lexmark recovery seems improbable in the near term. For the third quarter, the company now expects to make somewhere between 0 cents and 10 cents, versus the Street’s previous estimate of 81 cents. And, as the Lexmark ship sinks, don’t expect some private equity firm or rival to come galloping in with a takeover bid. Its tattered cash balance sheet, compounded by the general tightness in the private equity market, makes Lexmark unlikely buyout target.

How did Lexmark fall? Well, the firm hasn’t been doing well for awhile. It has lost 36% of its value since January, when it was trading around $73 a share. But even that recent peak is far off its all-time peak of $123 back in May 2000 at the height of the tech bubble. Now at $46 a share, Lexmark is far closer to its post-crash level, when it was floating around $30 a share at the end of 2000.

Today, however, Lexmark’s woes have nothing to do with a tech bust. Simply, customers are not buying Lexmark products.

Shares of Lexmark were down 6.4%, or $3.15, to $46.35 in Monday trading.

Many consumers are opting for similar products by its longtime rival Hewlett Packard or after-market suppliers. In order to compete with HP and third-party suppliers, who can offer bargain-basement deals, Lexmark has chipped away at its prices, hurting already thin profit margins. In addition, “higher than expected product costs” and a greater demand for the company’s lower-priced products weighed on second-quarter earnings, according to UBS analyst Ben Reitzes in a Monday research note.

He lowered his second-quarter estimate to 65 cents from 89 cents and dropped his fiscal year forecast to $1.98 from $3.52. According to Reitzes, a major drag in the second quarter was related to Dell, the computer and printer retailer. Since 2002, Lexmark has made printer and supplied parts for Dell. Dell’s underperformance, particularly in the inkjet printer business, has, by extension, battered Lexmark. While sales of Lexmark’s own-brand inkjet units actually increased 30%, that gain was almost completely negated by a decline in its sales to Dell.

“We continue to believe that supplies and original-equipment manufacturer sales trends will continue to be weak and even get worse throughout the year, applying more pressure to earnings. We continue to believe Dell is likely re-evaluating its printer strategy and would not be surprised if the company announced it was changing course in printing, especially inkjets,” Reitzes said. He predicted that Dell may completely exit the inkjet business by next year.

Lexmark’s woes seem to be very much Lexmark-centric. According to Reitzes, HP could be hurt by industry demand trends, but it is “better positioned long-term given its leading technology, robust product portfolio providing better mix, and strong channel relationships.”

Lexmark will have a tough time playing catch-up. Given its dwindling revenues, there will be less capital available for research and development. In the mean time, it can tighten its cost structure and try to run the business more efficiently. However, if the customer simply isn’t there, no financial tweaking can resuscitate Lexmark.

In December 2002, the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) criticised the four major manufacturers, Epson, http://www.stinkyinkshop.co.uk/acatalog/Canon_Printers_Inkjet_Cartridges.html, HP and Lexmark, over the lack of information available to consumers about the longevity of inkjet cartridges and the true cost of ownership.

In its report it said this lack of transparency regarding the price and performance of inkjet printer cartridges was unfair to consumers. The OFT claimed that 78 per cent of consumers use only the cartridges recommended by the manufacturer, which means expenditure on these consumables over the lifetime of a printer can amount to more than double the original cost of the printer.

The OFT called on the industry to devise a standard testing method for page yield and for these results to be made available by retailers to consumers at the point of sale and in promotional literature.

It also said the cartridge manufacturers should set up webpages where consumers can compare page yield and estimate the overall costs.

This standard was meant to be in place by the end of 2003 but the OFT gave the industry additional time.

In December last year (2006), the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), in conjunction with a consortium of printer manufactures including HP, Canon, Epson and Lexmark, approved new standards for accurately measuring how many pages inkjet cartridges would print.

The ISO 19752 standard for testing and quoting of yield for mono printing on mono laser printers already exists, and now this latest ISO standard for colour printing on colour printers ISO 24712 has been implemented. This standard was agreed and developed in consultation with the major inkjet printer manufacturers and they have all developed areas on their websites which detail the individual cartridge yields.

It is easy to see how the ISO standards offer a big improvement – standard test pages, standard test methodology and standard way of calculating and quoting the yield which should mean that as a consumer you should be able to make an objective assessment of the true cost of ownership (TCO) of your next inkjet printer.

However, even at this stage there is the view that perhaps the new standards do not go far enough, in that the standard does not address all the issues surrounding printing of monochrome pages on colour systems.

In essence, the test programme specifies a five-page document to be printed as continuously as the paper feed of the printer allows. The 5 pages are mono letter, two data presentation pages and a block and line test pattern. The yield is quoted as the number of pages printed when the cartridge runs out.

The difficulty is that in the real-world environment, the mix between colour and monochrome printing varies according to workgroup and individual. Thus it seems more useful to test to two standards, for mono and for colour, separately on the same machine. Having such data would further assist in addressing any decision to upgrade to colour printers - and indeed make realistic comparisons with the yield on Multifunction, All-in-One systems which add a further major dimension to the cost equation.

Now HP have stated publicly that the system is not accurate because the test is a continous test and does not take into account normal usage, which is to print some pages and then stop for some time and then print again. Some printers run a clean print head routine if they have not been used for some time thus using more ink than other printers who have integrated print heads into the cartridge (guess which manufacturer uses this technique? - HP of course!).

Apparently the Manufacturers have until the end of this year to ratify the ISO agreement, and HP are going back with new proposals to amend the test methodology in light of the information that they have gathered over the past few months of having to detail much more fully page yields.

Here at Stinkyink Towers we will publish as much information on each cartridge as we have available to enable you to compare your true printing costs and will keep you up to date on these developments

HP Laserjet 1020 Reviewed:

At a glance

• • Reviewers rating: 6.5 Good
• • The good: Very inexpensive; good text quality; print costs are low; manual feed tray for one-off prints.
• • The bad: No built-in duplexer; not network-ready; graphics print quality needs improvement.
• • The bottom line: The HP LaserJet 1020 is a good deal for home users who have light print needs, but just a little bit more money can get you more features and better print quality.

The HP LaserJet 1020 is an inexpensive monochrome laser printer for home users with light printing needs. Its print speeds and quality aren’t stellar, but at £112.99 (online at PCWorld), it’s hard to fault it too much. For that price, you get a very basic and compact printer that does a serviceable job. If you can spare an additional £20, however, the Lexmark E250dn comes with a duplexer and network card installed, it also offer better print quality.
The compact LaserJet 1020 measures just 14.6 inches wide, 9.5 inches deep, and 8.2 inches tall, and weighs a light 11 pounds. The front panel folds open to reveal a 150-sheet input tray and a single-sheet manual input tray, both of which have adjustable paper guides. The output tray resides on the top of the printer and includes a fold-out paper support.

It comes with a 234MHz processor and just 2MB of onboard memory. It has just a USB connection, so it’s better for single users than a multiuser environment. The Lexmark comes network-ready and with a Duplex option giving the opportunity for double sided printing.

The LaserJet 1020’s diminutive size is due to the fact that it’s a mono printer, and therefore contains only one toner the Q2612A cartridge. You can access the cartridge by popping open the printer’s top panel. Replacement cartridges cost £49.98 at Stinkyink.Com or £37.59 for a refilled cartridge, and are good for up to about 2,000 prints, which comes out to about £0.025 for the original or £0.018 per page from the refilled cartridge - not bad for a budget laser printer and in line with Lexmark E250d’s £0.02 per page. The recommended monthly duty cycle is 5,000 prints, so the LaserJet 1020 is best suited for home users with low to moderate print needs.

The HP LaserJet 1020’s speed and quality are not the best among its competition, but not terrible, either. It printed text at a rate of 12.52ppm (pages per minute) and graphics at a rate of 12.61ppm. The Lexmark E250d was much faster with graphics but slower with text.

The LaserJet 1020’s text quality was excellent, though not perfect: upon very close examination, we noticed that some characters had edges that weren’t perfectly sharp and overall, the text could stand to be a bit darker. Again, we were looking very closely. The graphics print didn’t fare as well as the text print, though. Solid blocks of toner showed a blotchy quality that we didn’t see with the Lexmark. The photo elements on the page weren’t as smoothly rendered as we would’ve liked. We preferred the quality of the Lexmark printer over that of the HP, but overall, the HP LaserJet 1020 is good enough for casual home users.

HP backs the LaserJet 1020 with a standard one-year warranty, which is on par with the competition. HP’s Web site has downloadable drivers, software, and manuals; e-mail and online chat tech support; FAQs; and a troubleshooting guide.