The end of the year is always a good time for reflection on the industry. Some of you may have heard that HP reached a major milestone this year—we shipped our 100 millionth LaserJet in May of 2006 (have shipped 104,000,000 at the time of this entry)! ! We held the “It Just Works” contest (video: 4:25, requires Microsoft's Windows Media Player or Real Networks' RealPlayer) to celebrate this achievement, asking entrants to submit photos and short stories explaining why they think their HP LaserJet has “withstood the test of time."
I have had a chance to review several of the entries and it never ceases to amaze me how LaserJet and laser printing have impacted so many lives and so many businesses. Some of the radio spots we ran for the 100 millionth LaserJet campaign built on this theme and reaffirm the effect that LaserJet printers can have. If you didn’t hear them, here’s part of the copy for one:
“It’s first assignment could be, in some small way, to help an idea sell itself. An idea that popped out of thin air, but has more weight now that it’s on paper—and printed perfectly, we might add. This 100,000,000 HP LaserJet might even print the autobiography of one company so that another company hires it. After all, it’s renowned for helping get new business.
It could, really, do anything. Help a piece of legislature become law, turn a concept into reality, rally an entire company around a single mission statement. It could be networked between floors of a flagship office, or sit on the only desk of a one person shop.”
These campaigns did an admirable job of showing anecdotes on how HP LaserJets can affect people’s lives. What strikes me is how far this business has evolved and how many people have been positively affected over time.
HP was first to market with a successful laser printer, the HP LaserJet 2686a in May of 1984. This ushered in the brave new world of printing high-quality monochrome documents quickly (and quietly). This also heralded the beginning of the end for daisy-wheel and most dot-matrix printers.
Very few might remember that the first LaserJets were rather large, expensive, heavy, general office printers where multiple people would bring their floppy disks over to the host PC in order to print their jobs (we used to refer to this as “sneaker-net”). HP then launched the first personal printer in 1989 so that people could have their own LaserJet connected to their PC.
We also introduced the first resolution enhanced technology (REt) that allowed for very high quality text and graphics ushering in the era of desktop publishing. Original text focused printer command languages later evolved into Printer Control Language 5 (PCL5) which was easily adapted to virtually all word-processing programs of the day.
At this point, we also had many customers who’d mentioned that they often have multiple users wanting to use the same printer by putting it on a cart and wheeling it between their PCs (we called this the “cart net”)—so, in 1991, we developed the 1st network printer. Followed soon thereafter with network printer management software, JetAdmin, and in 1993 a web based version, HP Web Jetadmin. Other technological improvements that have come at the request of customers include Instant-on Technology—to speed up the first page out; and the Universal Print Driver (UPD)--which is one driver that can be used for all LaserJets.
While we can only imagine the unique benefits that people around the world have received from 100 million LaserJets, one way to try to measure the ever increasing value that LaserJets have provided over time is in looking at purchase price declines relative to gains in printing speed. Some of you out there may recall that the original LaserJet 2686A cost $3495 at 8 pages per minute (ppm)—which equates to $437/page per minute. Note: this isn’t to be confused with Cost-Per-Page (cpp) printed which is now measured in cents.
The current LaserJet 1018 at 12 ppm delivers $11/page per minute--that’s a 97% reduction in the purchase price of a laser printer while increasing the performance by 50%! Even more dramatic, when we introduced the first Color LaserJet in 1994 the cost was $7295 at 2ppm color (because each page had to make 4 passes for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black, respectively)—leading to $3648/page per minute. This is now $37/page per minute for the HP Color LaserJet 1600. That is a mind boggling 99% less expensive while increasing the performance by 400%! Compare that with price performance declines of micro processors.Not only have LaserJets gotten faster, they’ve become much less expensive to buy--especially if you were to take inflation into account.
HP LaserJets have helped to improve the way we communicate in the office; replacing outmoded noisy, inefficient printers; enabling personal laser printing, as well as distributed network printing (distribute and print when needed, rather than print out bunches of documents, collate and send via internal or external mail). Color LaserJets brought printing to the office that is more persuasive. We now have even extended this LaserJet functionality to MFPs—so you don’t have to buy/service separate scanners, fax machines, copiers and printers.
In retrospect, introducing the 100 Millionth LaserJet may be an interesting historical milestone in this business. The positive experiences the other 104,000,000 (and counting) have made along the way—that sums up the real customer benefit.
Feel free to comment on your LaserJet experiences . . .
Posted
12-08-2006 5:08 PM
by
Anonymous