>> Years ago the executives at Hewlett Packard believed that printers and printer ink specifically were the company's cash cows. Sell them affordable printers and they'll come back to buy the ink especially now that they're printing images from those new digital cameras. So what happened? In the company's most recent quarterly earnings report the imaging and printing unit saw a 20% drop in third quarter revenue with ink down 13% and printers themselves off 23%. In part, you've got to blame Facebook. Social networking sites have taken digital photo sharing to a new level eliminating the need for printed images. Okay, that helps to explain the consumer but what about corporate? Well those numbers were down for HP too, 42% year over year. I don't know about you but I don't do much printing at work anymore. Maybe I'm trying to be green and save a tree, but more often than that I just don't have the need. Work documents get emailed and increasingly they're just edited and shared in some sort of online collaboration suite. And for a company that's trying to operate more efficiently doesn't it make sense to plug in one printer for everyone to share instead of having a dozen or so scattered throughout the office? Printers and ink are still cash cows for HP though it's safe to say that this cow may be getting winded. HP executives what with acquisitions like EDS and shifts into the services business know that printing just ain't what it used to be. It's a good thing too. Without EDS the numbers this past quarter would have been horrific.
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