Digital BW, The Print

Just to pick up on one point here Mr Roark, though not contentiously. Here 
in the UK the car manufacturers have either a 2 or 3 year absolute monolpoly 
of spare parts for any new car model they introduce, before the third party 
suppliers can kick in. This is mostly servicing parts such as oil filters 
and also silencers (mufflers?) from what I can gather, by the way. They key 
thing being irrrespective of any monoploy issues that any of the group 
members may have over this, surely a similar situation could apply to 
printer cartridges, whereby such as Epson could be the sole supplier for a 
set period of time when they introduce a new model before the market is up 
for grabs, so as to be able to recoup their development costs? Or don't 
printers last that long? Just an idea to throw into the pot ....

Tony Wells.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Paul Roark" <paul.roark@...>
To: <DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, November 10, 2007 4:26 PM
Subject: RE: [Digital BW] Re:MIS Newsletter


SNIP

Tony Wells wrote, in part:

>... Low useage amateurs would be worse off while professional
>printers would be better off,

In the original IBM case where their tying of punch card sales to the
business machines was declared an illegal "tying" agreement, the economic
justification for the IBM conduct was said to be that the punch cards were a
method of "metering" usage.  The way the high volume users paid more than
the low volume users, which seemed like a fair way to more closely equate
price with the value of the machine to the user.

If the scenario of the more sophisticated people more easily getting around
the ban happens, it may end up that the higher volume users in the real
world figure out how to avoid the meter, while the less sophisticated pay
the premium.

I have assumed Epson, in fact, is not selling the more sophisticated
machines at a loss.  The Epson rep who visited me the week before they filed
the ITC matter seemed mostly concerned with the low end.  The 220 was the
printer we discussed the most in this regard.  He stated Epson lost money on
those sales, and to compound the damage, the 220 was so good it was seen as
cannibalizing the sales of the profitable, more expensive printers.

While B&W ink sales are hardly the main focus of Epson's concern, I'd be
rather happy to see a solution that allowed Epson to compete head to head
with the others that are doing this same thing at the 260 level (letter or
A4 size) if the 13" or 1800-2400 and up level was wide open.

Epson has made some fine printers for our purposes.  I hope they continue to
do so.  It would sure be nice if both sides saw each other as partners as
opposed to adversaries.

As a Hasselblad rep once said to me: photographers tend to be creative and
cheap.  I can't see Epson succeeding in keeping at least the B&W enthusiasts
in their proprietary, expensive box.  It's just not going to happen.

Paul
www.PaulRoark.com