With the intense competition going on in the digicam space, Kodak, led by CEO Antonio Perez is hoping to grab market share from Hewlett-Packard and increase revenue with less expensive ink and long-lasting color.

The print industry currently commercialises around a $50 billion market. Although Kodak has been selling photo printers for a while now, this new launch is a full-on assault on the top figure in the printing industry: HP.

Kodak's secret is to skip over the reactive action of most printer manufacturers, through which heavy printer discount is the common practice, and instead focus on the reality of exorbitant ink prices. Kodak will be charging reasonable prices for its three new EasyShare All-in-One printers, the 5100, 5300 and 5500 (photo) which can print, copy and scan for $150-$300. However, the ink costs will be as low as $10 for a black cartridge and $15 for a five colour cartridge.

With ink about half the price of competitors - Kodak's secret is a print technology that doesn't require the print head to be in the cartridge, just ink - Kodak is hoping consumers will feel motivated to print more photos and in thus buy even more ink from the company. The technology also supposedly produces prints that can last up to 100 years, and will be making it into stores with these new EasyShares in March. The new Kodak printers are designed first and foremost to print high-quality photos but the printers are also intended for standard document printing—so they will be able to copy and fax, as mentioned earlier on.

It will definitely be interesting to observe if this will be enough to give Kodak a chance to gain importance in the consumer print world, but even more interesting will be to witness how the beneficial effect for consumers will unfold, as a possibly speedy price war sets in.