California electronics heavyweight HP and underdog Eastman Kodak Co. are in a marketing brawl.
Round One went to Kodak, which launched its All-in-One inkjet printer line in 2007, when it started comparing its printing cost per page to companies such as HP and Canon Inc. in a “Print and Prosper” advertising campaign.
Now, in Round Two, Hewlett-Packard is punching back with a marketing campaign of its own. HP cites its own statistics to claim that Kodak’s savings fall short of what’s promised and that Kodak has no printer cartridge recycling program.
The campaign also points out that users of an HP inkjet printer have to replace only one color cartridge when that color runs out, while the Kodak printers — which use an ink manufactured at Eastman Business Park — have all the color inks in one $15 cartridge, so if one color runs out, all the colors need replacing.
And HP takes a shot at Kodak by pointing out that Moody’s, the credit rating agency, has said there is a chance Kodak could face bankruptcy while HP was recently lauded in Fortune magazine.
Kodak and HP have a tangled history. Kodak CEO Antonio M. Perez came to the company in 2001 after a long career as a Hewlett-Packard executive.
HP, meanwhile, is the king of the jungle in the desktop inkjet world, commanding close to 50 percent of the market worldwide, said Tom Ashley, director of digital printing consulting firm Pivotal Resources USA.
Kodak hopes to ship around 1 million All-in-One printers this year — which would represent perhaps 2 percent of the industry’s sales.
The company’s printers seem to have better penetration with people who do lots of high-end printing such as photographs, meaning more ink cartridges sold, Ashley said.
HP “is still the market leader, but it sounded like Kodak must be making real inroads if you feel obliged to knock them like that,” Ashley said.
Filed under: Industry News | Tagged: all-in-one printers, HP, ink printer, kodak |
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