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HPIncResults

The inkjet printer market place has been a ridiculously profitable racket for HP and its ilk for decades, and manufacturers take fought tooth and nail to keep it that way. HP launched the latest salvo in this effort earlier this month, when a six-month-old firmware update all of a sudden kicked in and locked out third-party ink cartridges.

Multiple models in HP's OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro, and OfficeJet Pro X were all afflicted, even though none of these models had seen a firmware update in the past half dozen months. The consensus is that HP actually baked this response into the March 2022 update it released, only told no 1 it was coming. This ensured more than people would prefer the firmware and report that it worked without incident.

In a argument to the BBC, HP noted that some devices had been updated with this functionality via firmware, while others had shipped with the necessary chips and capabilities from Day 1. "The purpose of this update is to protect HP's innovations and intellectual belongings," HP said in a argument. "In many cases, this functionality was installed in the HP printer and in some cases it has been implemented every bit part of an update to the printer's firmware."

Dutch ink cartridge manufacturer 123inkt noted it had received more than ane,000 complaints in a single day as a result of its cartridges suddenly failing to piece of work in HP hardware. Refilled cartridges with an HP security flake should still role, though this requires that the user still purchase an original set of HP cartridges at significantly college prices.

This type of control mechanism just works well in the short-term — in the long run, 3rd-political party manufacturers take typically figured out a style around the problem. Every bit for why HP moved in this management, a quick check of its Q1 2022 results shows the problem:

HPIncResults

Revenue in printer sales has been sliding, and "Supplies" constitutes 67% of HP'south income. Sales were down fourteen% year-on-year compared with 2022, commercial hardware brutal 13%, and consumer hardware fell 46%. A company built on printers is seeing its sales collapse as well-nigh people don't purchase printers anymore. That's problematic in the best of times. For the split HP, bereft of its cushy enterprise revenue, information technology's downright disastrous.

Unfortunately, high profile moves like this are only going to backfire in the long-term. HP may well record a temporary revenue crash-land thanks to its sabotage, simply the customers whose hardware information technology spontaneously broke aren't going to remember it with love for the favor of paying huge marking-ups on microliters of ink that's indistinguishable from high-quality third-party brands.