Kodak Throws Hat Into InkJet Printing Ring

Kodak is entering the home printing market with a line of printers that use better quality ink developed by the company, saving consumers up to 50 percent on ink costs while allowing them to print the same number of pages.

The printers used pigment-based ink, and would retail for $9.99 for black ink, and $14.99 for the five-ink color cartridge. The consumer says home printing of 4x6 photos could be as little as ten cents per print with their system.

Even with the cheaper costs, Kodak plans to pull a profit off of both the unit and the ink, a definite shift from the traditional market strategy. While printers are normally sold at a loss, the large profits come from sales of replacement ink cartridges.

The cheaper cartridges also come from taking the print head out of the cartridge itself and integrating it with the printer. All the consumer needs now is the ink itself, the company says.

"For years, the high price of inkjet cartridges has kept consumers from freely using their printers," Kodak chairman and CEO Antonio Perez said. "With affordable premium inks, families can now create crisp documents and KODAK lab-quality photos at home."

The printers will come at a premium to what consumers have traditionally been accustomed to in recent years, however would follow the "All-in-one" model. The EasyShare 5100 would retail for $149.99 USD and include print, scan, and copy functionality, as well as no-PC-needed printing with PICTBRIDGE-enabled cameras.

The 5300 model will retail for $50 more and add a color LCD screen to view and edit photos from the printer, and memory card slots to print photos. Finally, the top-of-the-line 5300 will retail for $299.99 and add faxing, a document feeder and duplexer attachment.

All printers will initially sell exclusively at Best Buy when they first launch in March of this year. However Kodak said it plans to make the printers widely available by the holiday season.