Issue #0612/2 - Yet another round of supplies price increases pushes Lexmark business users further into the cold.
Again this month, Lexmark has raised prices to its customers on a large proportion of laser supplies products. This time, 88% of colour products are affected and 74% of mono laser products.
Although average increases are only 4%, some colour products are increased by more than 7% and mono by nearly 12%.
In particular, a number of low-yield mono toner cartridges have been increased by between 4.5% and 8.3% while their corresponding high yield cartridges remain unaffected. Cartridges falling into this category are for the old Optra T series, the T420, T52x, T62x, T63x and the E32x.
Although the average change on colour laser supplies is 4%, many of the products are affected by between 6% and 7%. Products falling into this category are the cartridges for the popular Optra C710 and C750 models (low-capacity cartridges only on C750), both discontinued, and the early colour laser printers, the Optra Colour 1200 and Optra SC.
Balancing this, remarkably it is the C510 (just discontinued) toner products that are affected by only 1.5%. Joining them are the units for the C52x and C9xx printers.
In general, supplies for current printers are affected less than those for discontinued printers.
Both of these characteristics follow the trend set by Lexmark over the years – that the company entices new customers to purchase with hardware prices that are lower than average and supplies pricing that is not immediately off-putting to the customer. Then, once the customer is committed, and especially after the machine in question is discontinued, prices are typically increased.
At this point in time, Lexmark is hiking supplies prices up on a regular basis, seemingly in an effort to stem ebbing revenues. The only product category that has so far been left relatively unaffected is the inkjet category – possibly because the consumer market tends to be more fickle than the business market.
This now means that some colour laser supplies products are 40% more expensive than they were at the beginning of 2005 (black toner for C510) and most are now priced between 15% and 25% higher! But it is still the C510 that has suffered most, with colour toners having also been increased significantly - by 35%. The only colour products to have escaped a double digit increase are certain non-toner supplies (drums / developers / waste toner bottles) for several printers, including the C910 and C7xx series, together with a few toner cartridges for the C7xx series.
On a slightly smaller scale, some mono supplies prices are now 25% higher than they were in January 2005 but, again, many have suffered double digit increases with the highest applied to the low-capacity cartridges noted above. Most increases are over 10% and those under 10% tend to be the high-capacity units.
Most significant of all, it is only the Linea range of compatibles for Hewlett-Packard printers that have not been increased over the period. In fact, they are subject to price reductions of almost 1%, reflecting the fact that Lexmark cannot justify price increases from the competitive standpoint on the open market.
It is only the fact that existing Lexmark customers are tied into the hardware they purchased in the first place that allows Lexmark to hike the prices in this way.
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