Why do the laser printer, plain-paper fax and small office photocopier manufacturers make cartridge-based machines with really expensive cartridges? Why can they make a machine like our big office photocopier where all you do is dump in a bottle of toner and walk away?
A13: Profit, once again. And, the toner industry is a huge source of profit for companies like Canon, IBM/LexMark and HP (estimated laser printer toner sales are in the billions of dollars annually!). These guys are geniuses, not just mechanical and electronic geniuses, but marketing and business geniuses, as well. Thanks to the “Razors and Razor Blades” mentality they employ, they know the real money to be made in the laser printer industry is in the sale of the proprietary supplies (the toner cartridge), not in the sale of the machines. They know from experience that there’s no way in the world to prevent competitors from making generic bottles of toner for use in any machine that uses bottles of toner (and driving the price down dramatically). But, they also knew that if they developed a proprietary system that requires a particular piece of machinery (the toner cartridge is a beautiful piece of machinery) in order to function, not only will every component inside that piece of mach
