A New Business Model for Color Printing: A Color Cost per Page That Rivals a Black-and-White Cost per Page Lifts the Final Barrier to Color Adoption and Usage

IDC OPINION

IDC believes that the use of color in documents can be a very effective communication tool. Compared with black-and-white-only output, color output offers significant benefits that can drive potential business opportunities. However, many potential users either are restricted from using color or are significantly limited from using it as much as they would like. The primary reason for this restriction/limitation comes from the traditionally higher costs associated with putting color on a page versus settling for monochrome output. As long as there is a significant delta between the color cost per page and black-and-white cost per page, the color market opportunity, while attractive, will be hampered by this cost obstacle. Unfortunately, this all-too-common scenario serves to limit companies' ability to capitalize on the numerous benefits available in adding color to general business documents.

Xerox, in an attempt to address the significant differential between color and black page costs, has created a new printer model for its product portfolio. The new Phaser 8860 printer incorporates a unique pricing model so that a larger share of the total costs is applied up front to the acquisition price.

This new printer has substantially lower-cost color consumables - to the point where its color output costs rival black-and-white-only output costs on most standard laser printers. This achieves three primary objectives:

1. Typical workgroup color printer users can gain significant cost savings with a Phaser 8860 versus conventionally priced color laser printers.
2. The new pricing model is designed to drive more color usage by eliminating the fear of high color costs when printing significant color volume.
3. The Phaser 8860 can produce high-impact black business-oriented documents with some color at a cost that is similar to that of black-only pages produced on other devices. As a result, Phaser 8860 users get the benefit of using color without paying more for it.

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