An interesting article in today's business section of the paper focused on HP's
printer/supplies business operations. Found some interesting details I thought
I would pass along.

* Create 700 different inks/mo & perform 7000 tests on each.
* $12B sales in 03 representing 16% of revenue.
* Has more than 100 different types of ink and toner cartridges on the market.
* R&D $900M annually.
* Avg price for ink cart. = $28.
* Ave profit for ink cart. = $16.80
* Current ink cart dispenses 36k droplets/sec from 512 nozzles.
* Original ink cart design dispensed 1200 droplets/sec from 12 nozzles.
* Holds more than 9000 patents on printer related inventions.
* a paraphrase from an HP exec., "it's a razor and blade model, loose money on
the printer and make money on the supplies."

Mickey

An old retiree looking fondly back to the days when Bill and Dave were at the helm.