3 ms·

>The business is razors and blades, build the printer, take a loss on it and make it up on the back end with toner/ink sales. No, that's the business now. It

>The business is razors and blades, build the printer, take a loss on it and make it up on the back end with toner/ink sales. No, that's the business now. It wasn't like that back in the 80s. The printer companies chose to adopt that shitty business model. >The most popular solution, DRM. The big boys got to it quicker than the little guys, but every one of them knew this was 100% necessary or they'd get their lunch eaten at either end Yet some printer makers don't bother with this and are still in business, like Brother.

campbel 3y ago
> No, that's the business now. It wasn't like that back in the 80s. The printer companies chose to adopt that shitty business model. The entire industries hand was forced to adopt this model. Let me spell it out a bit. 1. Firs step, companies started to heavily discount device costs so that they could reap the profit on the backend from supplies sales. 2. 3rd party companies began to sell ink/toner for their devices eating into their supplies profits. 3. They couldn't go back to raising device prices or they'd lose market share. Consumers had gotten used to $500 devices being priced at $200 or less. 4. They add DRM to cartridges to force devices to use their supplies. 5. DRM is routinely cracked by 3rd party sellers or they just rely on refilling 1st party cartridges. 6. New and increasingly consumer hostile DRM tactics are introduced that are harder to crack. 7. HP and others are attempting to shift to a subscription model to get out of this game all together. Brother and other small brands are catching up and implementing similar DRM tactics on their new devices.