The profit is in the ink rather than the printer. There are two issues with someone coming into the market with a cheap printer/ink. 1) It's hard for any busin

The profit is in the ink rather than the printer. There are two issues with someone coming into the market with a cheap printer/ink. 1) It's hard for any business to keep selling a product at 10% profit margin when you know you can sell it for 200% profit margin with the price increase not affecting sales. 2) In the rare situation that a business would accept low margins 'just to be nice to the customer' - they'll just get bought out. It's hard to not accept 10 years of profit for a business when it's being offered to you.