At issue: Kodak’s advertising claim
that buyers can “Save up to 50% on everything you print” with its
EasyShare line. Among other things, Canon claimed that Kodak didn’t
make it clear that the savings claim was based on ink costs only. This
week Canon it lost its challenge when the NAD ruled that Kodak
“provided reasonable support for the advertising claim.”
All of this
would seem to be a tempest in a teapot. Why would Canon USA bother
pursuing such a claim against upstart Kodak, which has less than 1% of
the market for consumer-grade multifunction printers?

The answer
is that there’s a lot more at stake. First of all, printer
manufacturers “give away” the hardware with little or no profit margin,
but make a fat profit on the ink, which carries a very large margin.
Secondly, Kodak’s ink is indeed cheaper – a lot cheaper, as my
comparison test against an HP model demonstrated. It’s doubtful that
Canon, which follows HP’s “give away the razor to sell the blades”
model, would far any better.Now consider this trend: The amount of
printing consumers do is already on the decline, according to IDC,
particularly with photos, which use a lot of ink.

Enter Kodak,
with its printer line that breaks the business model for consumer
printers by offering low-cost ink. Kodak is going after a select group
of Canon’s most profitable customers: Those who do a lot of printing of
photographs at home. These are also the people who are the most
influential with other buyers.It’s a long shot, but grass roots
adoption of EasyShare printers and word of mouth buzz about the
advantages of using low-cost ink could – if it caught on – upend the
established business model in the market.

That’s a big if. One
year after the EasyShare launch, Kodak faces some challenges. If Kodak
is able to gain market share, that would put pressure on ink prices,
depress margins and cause printer manufacturers to rethink their
business model. But with sales of just 520,000 units in a market of 61
million, Kodak’s strategy isn’t even a blip on the radar screen. And
beyond its own online store and a few high profile retailers such as
Best Buy and Wal Mart, Kodak doesn’t have broad distribution.
Furthermore, while ink prices are a top complaint among consumers who
have printers, so far they seem to pay more attention to purchase price
when shopping for a new unit.