The days of paying half the price of your printer just to replace its ink cartridge may finally be over. Following Eastman Kodak’s dive into the market for cheap ink, printer manufacturer Hewlett-Packard has announced today that it will also be mixing up a new strategy for selling inks with an upcoming line of cartridges.
The most significant change will be cost. According to HP, its newest cartridges will sell for as little as $14.99. This will make them a huge leap from the company’s current cartridges, which generally tend to hover around $30.
HP also plans to introduce a new system of categorizing cartridges, with a color coding to differentiate between them. Blue standard cartridges will be designed for consumers who don’t print many pages per week, but still expect their prints to be top notch when they do. Green value cartridges will hold up to three times as much ink as standard cartridges, and supposedly offer consumers 30 to 45 percent savings on a cost-per-page basis. Red specialty cartridges will be available for more specific needs, such as photo printing.
The new cartridges are expected to roll out some time in 2007.
