Most people don't pay attention, while marketing and availability works. For what its worth, I bought an HP printer about 8 years ago and was pretty happy with

Most people don't pay attention, while marketing and availability works. For what its worth, I bought an HP printer about 8 years ago and was pretty happy with it. It was reliable, fairly simple, the screen UI was genuinely well-designed, and the ink prices were fine with how rarely I printed. And then I moved from the US to the EU and discovered that printer cartridges are regionally locked. After much research and many calls I learned HP can unlock the printer, but you need you buy completely new cartridges first. I gave away the printer and bought a Brother. So, yeah, it was decent product clearly ruined by stupid business decisions.