Xerox Corp is hoping to keep up with the competition in the printing business, partly with the help of new technology. --PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK - THE economics of color printing in big offices are simple: A page of black and white costs about 2 cents per page, while color runs about 8 cents.
That's one reason why only 15 per cent of the 2.25 trillion pages printed worldwide each year are in colour.
Not so green?
Hewlett-Packard Co, one of Xerox's main rivals, is sceptical.
Tom Codd, an HP vice-president, said the solid ink printers already on the market have produced images of lesser quality than standard laser printers; colours fade and leave a waxy residue on the page that's hard to write over. And because solid ink machines have to keep the ink heated, they have tended to use more power.
Xerox Corp is hoping to upend that math - and its competition in the printing business - partly with the help of new technology.
The company is unveiling a printer on Thursday - the ColorQube - that uses a waxy substance resembling a huge crayon instead of ink or toner cartridges. The technology previously had been used in smaller Xerox printers. And Xerox said that instead of the common setup of charging corporate customers 2 cents for black and white pages or 8 cents for colour, the company will charge based on how much colour a given printing job requires.
That will mean a 62 per cent drop in the price of colour printing, according to Xerox.
'There is a fundamental barrier that we were trying to break,' says Ursula Burns, the company's president. 'The world is in colour, that's what our customers want.'
Green is one colour in particular Xerox is pushing with the new machine. The company says it produces less waste and less power than average laser printers.
Coming out with such a printer carries risks for the Norwalk, Connecticut-based company. After all, many of the colour machines Xerox is looking to render obsolete are Xerox machines.
'The trick is to make sure that it doesn't just displace the laser jets,' said Angele Boyd, an analyst with the research firm IDC. Xerox will have to try to appeal to a wider market and steal share from competitors, perhaps by touting its green credentials. -- AP
