No he meant that Printer Companies sell the printer at a loss and then hope that cartridge/toner sales will offset that loss and some. The same way Sony sells PlayStations at a loss, recovering money from game titles and Gillette sells shaving machines at a loss, and earns profits from blades.

No, no, I understood that point of view from the beginning, I just doubt it for the particular example of printers.

I have a few reasons.

Companies would have no incentive on lowering price on laser technology when most people are encouraged to buy inkjet.

I believe there is a rather small cost difference between a $100 and a $2,500 printer. Yes, the $2.5k printer is bigger, but it's just more mechanical parts. I believe most of the cost is in development and the printing technology itself.

Some Printer/Toner combinations have a much lower TCO than others, and the lower TCO does not reflect in a higher then average price for the printer itself (on the contrary).

Companies are pushing forward a lot of models. My Lexmark X203N is in no relevant way better then Lexmark X202N. I believe companies would not waste resources on creating so many compatible printers if they would not make money out of them.

Companies are also pushing forward incompatible models. Toner for your old printer becomes prohibitively priced and you just buy a new printer because of lower TCO. If companies were having a loss from the printers themselves, they would't try to make you buy a new one so much.

I can't comment on our marketing strategy, even if I were in the know I couldn't really do that.

However, it's very clear that the low end models are loss leaders so the worst thing you can do to us is buy a new printer and never buy supplies or buy off-brand ink.

On the higher end models the cost curve changes since lower volume = higher relative price. But those business-targeted printers tend to be compete on TCO, like you're saying, and customers analyze cost per page and support cost, the initial purchase price doesn't really weigh in that much. The $2500 printer will have to last longer, use better materials and have some warranty cost factored in. You're absolutely right that it's not a linear scale-up from your $49 dollar printer at home.

companies often take a loss on a product with the expectation of making it up by selling consumables for that product. google "loss leader" for more info.