HP Launches New Enterprise MFPs Priced By 'Usage'

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based company also rolled out new printers and consumables plus an update to its Web JetAdmin management tool.

The HP CM8060 and CM8050 MFPs provide color and black-and-white output and a new user interface with a 10-inch color touch screen. The C8060 prints 60 pages per minute (ppm) in black-and-white and 50 pages per minute in color. The C8050 prints at 50 ppm in color and 40 ppm in black-and-white.

HP said the new MFPs will ship with "usage-based pricing," which will vary for professional color output, general-office color output and black-and-white output.

The company also announced the following:

• "Dual packs" of HP Laser Black Print Cartridges, which carry a 10 percent discount from single cartridges. HP said it had seven dual packs, with street prices starting at $202.

• New brochure paper for products with HP's Edgeline technology, targeted at self-marketing solutions.

• A "newly designed" HP Color LaserJet CM4730 MFP, with a touch-screen user interface and a starting street price of $4,999.

• The HP 9250c Digital Sender for digitizing paper documents and providing a workflow platform for them. The street price starts at $3,199.

• New low-end print servers at prices between $149 and $389.

The new offerings continue HP's efforts to protect its crown jewels: its printing and imaging business. The HP Imaging and Printing Division has become a $27 billion behemoth showing 7 percent growth. Of that, commercial printing hardware was tracking at 21 percent growth in unit shipments at the end of HP's last fiscal year.

At the same time, the market has become increasingly competitive in the channel, with rivals such as Xerox, Konica Minolta, Oki Data and Lexmark taking aggressive new moves to bolster their relationships with solution providers, broaden their product lines and grab share in segments where customers produce more documents on a monthly basis. Some companies, such as IBM, have simply decided to exit the printer business, and others, such as Dell, have experienced declining sales as solution providers have clobbered it in higher-output markets.

HP also said Wednesday that Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of its Imaging and Printing Group, would give investors an update to the company's enterprise strategy during a presentation on Friday.