Vendor Agendas Mar Printer Cost Project

Kyocera and HP have been left to thrash out whose products are most cost-efficient after research into the subject foundered

Attempts to set an industry standard for measuring the lifetime costs of ownership in the printer market have collapsed, leaving Hewlett Packard and Kyocera arguing over who has the most cost-efficient offering.

Independent procurement consultant Prosource had hoped to gather information from a number of printer vendors and work towards setting a benchmark for measuring the cost-per-page performance of printers. The research broke down amid accusations of vendors attempting to hijack the findings for their own marketing campaigns.

Brother and Oki are understood to have been interested in the project, but were not actively involved with it.

Miles Hunt, director of Prosource, said he had hoped the work would benefit the printer industry as a whole, but felt some of the manufacturers involved were following their own agenda. ?As we got closer to doing the work it became apparent that the whole debate was about to form the basis of a row between certain vendors about who has the cheapest products.?

Hunt added that Prosource suspended its work on finding a standard before a row erupted. ?We don?t want to become hostages to any manufacturer?s promotional campaign,? he said.

Kyocera believed that research into cost of ownership would show that it offered better value than HP, and now believes it has been denied an opportunity to demonstrate this.

Kyocera marketing manager Neville Rawlings said Kyocera had been keen to get involved with the project. ?This issue is no longer about marketing, it?s a real business issue. It represents a unique selling point for Kyocera and we must use it whenever we can. I welcomed the chance to talk about this, but HP has walked away from it again.?

Rawlings added that he had not been told why the research was scrapped, but suspected it may have been because of a lack of co-operation from some of the vendors involved.

HP was not available for comment.