Another day, another article about people using alternatives to the manufacturer’s ink. The article notes that customers who buy refilled or remanufactured cartridges currently only make up 25% of the market, but that obviously that number is growing. As usual, they mention how lots of new stores like Office Depot and Walgreens are offering refill services. They also mention the fact that buying a couple new sets of printer cartridges will cost you more than a new printer (for most moderately-priced inkjets, it’s between 2-3 sets of cartridges).

Then they get into how much money HP makes from ink and toner:

Take Hewlett-Packard Co. In its most recent fiscal year, HP earned more than half of its $6 billion operating profit from its imaging and printing group. And some analysts believe that number understates the importance of ink and toner to HP because the imaging group includes printers, which HP sells at little or no profit.

In past years, estimates for how much HP makes from their ink were as high as 75%, but in recent years it has gone down a bit. Because HP doesn’t break down exactly where their profits come from, everyone is left to just guess. Here is a nice quote though:

HP doesn’t break out results for individual items, but ink and toner “are both nicely profitable,” says Pradeep Jotwani, the company’s senior vice president of imaging and printing.

Isn’t that nice?

Ink-refill firms aim at printer giants [Boston Globe]