HP reinvents, expands portfolio of supplies

Singapore was the place to be as HP, one of the world’s largest IT companies, announced the reinvention and expansion of its supplies portfolio to deliver more customer choice, greater value, and an enhanced customer experience. The scale of HP’s newest endeavor is unlike anything seen today in the industry.

The historic Arts House in Singapore became the venue for HP’s presentation of its innovative supplies strategy for 2007. Journalists from across Southeast Asia listened intently as key HP representatives laid out the company’s new groundbreaking portfolio of inks formulated to meet the needs of different consumers.

“One size does not fit all” was the key phrase in the presentation that underlined the importance of providing choice and value to the HP consumer. Starting this year in the Asia-Pacific region, HP will offer three different cartridge options to match customers’ specific printing needs.

“For more than 25 years, our customers only had the option of one cartridge for their HP printers. Now, customers will have multiple cartridge options,” says John Solomon, VP for supplies for HP Asia-Pacific and Japan. “Delivering customer choice and value is critical for driving continued growth. The innovation HP is applying toward the customer experience is as important as the innovation behind the technology that goes into our high-performance ink and paper products.” This innovation is expected to roll out across the Asia-Pacific in stages within the year.

This innovation involves HP’s newest high-volume ink cartridges called the XL Print Cartridges. Offering up to 40 percent in cost savings, these new cartridges deliver more value over standard cartridges.

“HP invests over $1 billion for innovations alone. In fact, this is the reason why HP has over 9,000 patents for its products — half of which are in supplies. That’s a big thing,” says Jun Juntilla, business manager for consumer inkjet supplies for HP Asia-Pacific and Japan. “XL HP ink cartridges are our new offering that provides customers with better choice for higher volume requirements.”

He adds: “This set of cartridges is part of our value proposition to customers. It provides up to 40 percent in savings to customers that typically use a lot of prints and high volume users. What’s good is that these cartridges can provide three times the amount of prints compared to regular cartridges offered in the market.”

All three color-coded categories deliver the superior reliability and print quality customers expect from HP. Customers will be able to walk into a retail store and based on this color scheme, quickly scan their options to find the right cartridge. The new complete offering includes:

• Standard (blue) — The standard cartridges are designed for customers who print a moderate number of pages on a weekly or monthly basis. The blue standard cartridge, HP’s most popular cartridge choice, delivers the right value for everyday printing needs.

In addition, HP Simple Black (for selected markets) offers hassle-free, draft-quality prints at an affordable price — with no compromise on HP reliability and printer performance.

• Value (green) — HP value inkjet print cartridges offer cost savings and high yields for customers who print in high volume. The value category also includes the new high-capacity XL inkjet print cartridges, which provide customers up to 40 percent cost savings, more than three times the prints, and the peace of mind that comes with fewer cartridge changes, as compared to standard cartridges. For example, the new HP 74XL volume is three times higher than the standard HP 74 cartridge. In addition, HP’s new value category includes new twin packs that deliver savings up to 15 percent. This value category also includes all existing twin packs, multi-packs and photo value packs.

• Specialty (red) — HP specialty inkjet print cartridges offer additional performance advantages over HP’s standard ink formulations. Specialty cartridges include HP’s wide array of photo inkjet print cartridges, which are ideal for customers who primarily print photographs and demand exceptional quality and increased durability.

In addition, HP will be offering its new HP Vivera+ cartridge series, which brings the latest HP color ink technology and benefits to HP’s older range of printers. For example, the new enhanced versions of the HP Vivera+ 57 HP 78 and HP 95 ink cartridges are specially formulated to bring bright and vivid colors to HP’s plain and specialty papers.

Compared to the standard 57, 78 and 95 cartridges, HP Vivera+ 57, 78 and 95 provide improved photo printing, producing vivid photos that will resist fading for generations. Solomon says the specialty inks have helped in strengthening HP’s position as the leading choice for photo-quality prints.

“HP is also the market leader in cut-sheet photo media. This is a market which is growing very rapidly in many markets, and we’re starting to see it come up in a big way here in the Asia-Pacific as well,” he adds.

Going back to the Vivera inks, Juntilla says, “HP Vivera+ cartridges are specialty cartridges that have Vivera inks offered to more printers out in the market now. (HP) printers that did not have Vivera inks before are now able to have Vivera benefits as well. As most of the market knows, Vivera stands for ‘Quality on print permanence.’ Vivera+ cartridges will now be made available to customers who will have the same print quality, the same print permanence that these ink formulations have.”

Eng Heok Ong, business manager for commercial laser supplies for HP Asia-Pacific and Japan, elaborates on the special formulation that comprises the Vivera brand. “HP Vivera inks are specially engineered to work with HP inkjet printer cartridges, printers, and papers to deliver the best color performance, image quality and fade resistance. These Vivera inks are special proprietary HP ink formulations that offer clearer colors, enhanced shadow detail, and reduced image grain for stunning color prints such as photographs — especially black-and-white images and for the special applications of photography. Vivera inks also offer a gamut of up to 72.9 million rich, brilliant colors. Vivera inks offer the industry-leading print permanence that can last 108 years.”

John Shane, director for the communication supplies consulting service of InfoTrends, one of the leading worldwide market research and strategic consulting firms for the digital imaging and document solutions industry, says, “InfoTrends believes that inkjet consumers have different values and needs when it comes to their supplies purchases. The changes that HP is making to their inkjet cartridge offering will allow users to choose the cartridge that best suits their own budgets and values.”

Environmental commitment

HP, through its Planet Partners program, saw more than 260 million pounds of HP LaserJet and HP inkjet print cartridges returned and recycled to date. Eng says, “HP Laserjet toner cartridges today are 53 percent less moving parts compared to 1992 models, and are constructed using 30 to 80 percent recycled materials.”

The reduction of moving parts, through innovation, means a better customer experience — using HP Laserjet printers, customers can get very good reliability out of their printers. The high usage of recycled materials in the HP Laserjet cartridges means less impact on the environment.

Originals vs refills

One of the major issues concerning the printer market today is the proliferation of ink refill or remanufactured cartridges. HP’s newest ink strategy will definitely make an impact on how and where consumers get their products. Independent studies have shown that 16 percent, or nearly one out of six refilled ink and remanufactured color toner cartridges were DOA or failed prematurely. Original HP ink and color toner cartridges worked consistently and produced 25 percent more client-ready documents than refilled or remanufactured cartridges.

This, considering that HP has a 452 million installed base of printers out in the marketplace today, with approximately 100 million customers from home users, SMBs to enterprises. This drives HP’s large and growing supplies business, which is approximately a $15-billion business on a worldwide basis.

Solomon says, “HP’s market share of supplies is quite high. Seventy-five percent of all toner cartridges purchased for the printers in the installed base are HP originals, and 81 percent of all ink cartridges purchased for the printers used by our 100 million customers are HP originals. We’re very proud of that.”

“HP technologies are designed to work together as a holistic printing system for quality and reliability. All aspects of the printing technology — for example, the HP cartridge design, color scale toner, and Vivera ink formulations — are proprietary and patented. They are designed to work together and therefore cannot be replicated to the same degree of print quality and reliability. Always use originals if you want that industry-backed print quality,” Eng says.

New technologies, new directions

Another exciting development is HP’s decision to go into the copier market. Solomon elaborates: “HP has not been a major player in the copier market up until now. We’re entering this market aggressively; it’s a very large market. The opportunity on a worldwide basis is about $23 billion, and this is a market we don’t have a significant share in today. We’re going after that market in a big way with solutions that are very valuable to our customers.”

Furthermore, HP introduces its latest Edgeline Technology that will capitalize on the new HP Vivera inks. Designed for high-performance, heavy-duty printing, Edgeline Technology delivers high reliability, fast speeds, consistently high print quality, leading hardware costs and low cost per page. It is a powerful ink-based printing engine for high-volume workloads (up to 71 ppm) and offers up to 30 percent lower cost per color page compared to equivalent MFP devices. This new technology lets the paper move, not the print heads, allowing more accurate printing and brilliant color.

It is with Edgeline that HP hopes to accomplish many of its goals for the year. Solomon says, “Edgeline is a leading example of our ink-based technology that we’re bringing to market this year. This powerful ink-based system can deliver up to 71 pages per minute. What’s interesting about this product is that the print heads don’t move — it’s the paper that moves and this enables these very high speeds. This technology allowed HP to access the copier market as well as adjacent markets in photography, photo kiosk, and photo lab using the same ink-based technology.”

With an increasing portfolio of innovations, it is clear that HP’s lineup for 2007 makes it much easier for Asia-Pacific consumers to choose the right products for their needs.