Digital BW, The Print

Tyler,

Just to add some points to your argument.

I worked for a company that produced parts for a large number of the 
high tech companies here in Silicon Valley, HP in particular. The 
goal in selling ink jet printers a couple of years ago was to realize 
a net profit of -1% to +3%.

None of the ink jet manufactures expect to make a profit by selling 
printers. The profit is in selling ink. (Hence the chipped 
cartridges.) You can buy and entire Epson printer for $69 including 
cartridges. A set of replacement cartridges for it will cost you 
$34.10. Of course Epson is not alone in this all the manufacturers 
are playing exactly the same game.

While the interest in B&W remains consistently strong, it is still a 
tiny piece of the market and none of the big players are likely to 
pursue it especially in the current economy.

If they wanted to do it though, I wouldn't bet that they couldn't and 
very quickly too! It might be more likely that someone like Canon who 
is trying to come from behind would offer B&W.

Martin


--- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., "Tyler Boley" <tyler@t...> 
wrote:
> --- In DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@y..., Johnny Deadman <john@p...>
> wrote:
> > I hear from a normally very reliable source that Epson are working
> on a
> > dedicated monochrome quadtone printer. No, doesn't make any sense
> to me
> > either.
> > -- 
> > John Brownlow
> 
> I've heard that too, then also that it will never happen from an
> equally reliable source. With Epson, it's all about profit, we 
> don't represent a very big market. Recovering the costs of 
developing
> and bringing such a product to market would take 
> much longer than Epson is comfortable with. Even after that, how
> profitable would such a product really be?
> Look at the competition. Did the 2000P bring all the Generations and
> other 3rd party ink users back under the Epson fold?  
> Not even close, and other alternatives like the Cone color pigments
> still still come out under the shadow of the Epson pigs.
> Considering the alternative monochrome aproaches we have at this
> point, they would be jumping into crowded waters 
> with no gaurantees of grabbing the majority of a relatively small
> group of users.
> So, that's the aurgument against it, from a reliable source. But as 
I
> said, I heard it would happen from a reliable source too, 
> quite a while ago.
> Tyler