HP ink and the Recession
It looks like theres no sector that the economic downturn isnt affecting in this day and age. Stocks are down, jobs are scarce and, apparently, people are printing less. Major media are reporting that the printing business is particularly hard hit in the current economic climate, meaning that stock in HP ink is going down in accordance with a decrease in demand.
Analysts say that the drop in printing (and, as a result, ink usage) is only to be expected. After all, when major companies have laid off thousands of employees, there are simply fewer people around to use the printers; it doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure that one out. Of course, companies are also encouraging staff to develop a paper-less office environment, and to work with documents as much as possible on the computer, as opposed to on paper. This is often in the guise of environmentalism, but its the bottom line that counts: cash-strapped businesses are desperate to save money on paper and ink, one of an offices greatest costs at a reported $8,000 per gallon (more than prices fetched by both oil and human blood).
But printer and ink companies beg to differ. Hewlett Packard claims that, despite the numbers, the truth is that people are printing just as much as they always did. Sales numbers have been going down not because people dont want to print anymore, but because companies arent stocking up on ink cartridges like that used to. In the old days, office managers might buy ink supplies to last for an entire year all in one go. Now that budgets are growing increasingly precarious, however, offices resort to buying small, short-term orders, which may temporarily drive sales figures down, but in appearance only.
Worse than the recession is the problem of ink piracy, says HP. Stealing HP cartridges and reselling them at a small discount, or reselling them at a steeply reduced price under a different name altogether, has become an increasing problem for the major ink companies. In fact, HP loses billions of dollars in sales each year just due to these counterfeiting problems, recession or no recession.