Digital BW, The Print

If I could buy a desktop printer that used these carts, and they would sell them to me at the same price, I would buy Epson inks. Since they feel they need to inflate the price of the ink by as much as they do for the consumers, then I will continue to buy third party inks and Epson gets nothing. If only this logic was allowed to go through the Epson management.

--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com, "Paul" <roark.paul@...> wrote:
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> > Wish it was a 6 color printer, getting the light magenta and light cyan would be nice ...
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> As an old antitrust enforcer and economics guy, it's interesting to speculate as to how the Epson-Noritsu-Fujifilm "alliance" is and will play the marketing game here.  We're such a tiny niche that we're probably irrelevant as individuals, but in the bigger picture they have some interesting issues.
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> First, companies can usually maximize their profits and revenues if they can "skim" the demand curve -- that is, sell to different segments of the market at different prices.  To do this they have to separate markets.  The 4 v. 6 inks might be part of that.  Note that the Epson WorkForce printers have only dense CMY inks, but then 2 blacks.  The WorkForce 40 is a 2 picoliter printer and can probably do a rather good job of printing without light inks.  Still, the need to buy very large carts and hand load probably will stop many from tapping the dry lab supply market.  Forming small local buying groups is one way to overcome the mere initial cost issues.  There are not that many B&W printers out there, but there are a lot of local camera clubs.
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> Second, and somewhat related, the Noritsu carts are almost probably the subject of a vertical price fix.  All the prices are identical -- which does NOT prove a price fix.  Under U.S. antitrust law vertical price fixing is now legal in most circumstances.  However, if there is a horizontal aspect to the agreement, it can become illegal.  So, combine the possible vertical price fix with the fact that there is clearly a horizontal "alliance" (their term) of competing companies, and things could get interesting.   
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> So, this game is interesting to me on several levels.  Note that I am not alleging any illegal activity here, nor to I want to see any problems for Epson and these other fine companies.  They've brought us great machines and materials.  I hope they see us as an interesting little side show.  I suspect if they think about it, they'll realize that they're making more sales (I've purchased a printer and inks) and perhaps taking sales away from competitors sufficiently to offset and of their own sales at higher prices.  
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> At any rate, we have some interesting new materials to work with, and at the moment, for me, Epson seems to have kicked the HP PK out of my 1400 (but not the Eboni-6).
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> Paul
> www.PaulRoark.com
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