> Believe it or not, a lot of large organisations opt into systems like this.
The way you describe it, I can see that being a viable product. To some extend this could be HP so focused on a very niche segment, like Microsoft with Recall, that HP+ actually seems like a sensible idea. They then forget about the fact that this is just a small segment of they customer base, but they don't really communicate with the rest, so they just roll out this product to everyone and it fails.
However, HP isn't keeping this around, they are discontinuing the product line all together, and from the article it seems like they also forgot about the needs of those large organisations (can't assume that the printers are allowed online, for good reason).
It does seems like it could be a reasonable, but probably less profitable business, if it had been better designed and targeted.
The odd thing is that this business model is super old in the industry, going back before computers were common in offices. That is how a ton of copiers were supplied, either sold with a service contract or just rented. That continued for a long time, even for small offices this was fairly common until in the 2010s when laser printers got ridiculously cheap.
However, I'm not aware of these services being offered directly from the manufacturer, it seemed to be via local office supply houses that were dealers for the manufacturers. That being said, this service was probably available direct from the manufacturers for large organizations.
ETA: One thing I didn't mention that I feel is the main reason the service contract model went away is that printers are cheap enough it doesn't make tons of sense to service vs replace. We still have a service contract with guaranteed fix/replacement times for our specialized zebra printers at work. Still makes sense on a 3k+ printer that you can't buy locally off the shelf.
The way you describe it, I can see that being a viable product. To some extend this could be HP so focused on a very niche segment, like Microsoft with Recall, that HP+ actually seems like a sensible idea. They then forget about the fact that this is just a small segment of they customer base, but they don't really communicate with the rest, so they just roll out this product to everyone and it fails.
However, HP isn't keeping this around, they are discontinuing the product line all together, and from the article it seems like they also forgot about the needs of those large organisations (can't assume that the printers are allowed online, for good reason).
It does seems like it could be a reasonable, but probably less profitable business, if it had been better designed and targeted.