First it was the mini battle between giants HP and minnows Kodak for a piece of flesh in the market. Now, HP is turning the heat on Xerox over solid ink printers which released earlier this week. HP had to provide a quick reply as the Xerox news release openly compared and criticised the prices of HP with Phaser 8860.

HP corporate statement read - "here is a huge growth opportunity in the color market, so it's no surprise our competitors are aggressively pursuing this space to try to capture market share. Over the years, we've seen many competitors attempt what Xerox is trying to do -- give up margins in order to gain market share -- but to date no one has been successful with this strategy. It is somewhat surprising Xerox would choose to use solid ink technology as their play for the color market considering the inherent issues with solid ink for general office printing needs, its limited success in the market to date, and its environmental challenges."

HP was surprisingly on the offense than on the defense. They flayed Xerox in the field of power consumed. HP said that the solid sticks take immense energy to melt and the estimated power consumption would be three times as HP laser printers. HP also questioned the quality and durability of prints arising from solid inks.

Xerox was quick to react to HP's allegation - "While a typical color laser printer generates about 157 pounds of waste (packaging and cartridges) after 100,000 prints, the Phaser 8860 printer, (which has no cartridge) produces only 5 pounds of waste after 100,000 prints. Many agree that such results outweigh the nominal increase in energy that's required to run the device (12.6 kilowatt hours/week, vs. 4.9kilowatt hours/week for the HP 4700)"

The battle has begun and a winner is unlikely to emerge. There will be sympathisers on both sides and customers on both ends. Xerox's gain will definitely be HP's loss as the leader could see a piece of his pie stolen away. My money is on solid ink as it reduces printing wastes and hence contributes towards greener Earth.

via Channel Web