After five months of persistent rumors, Staples announced that it will discontinue the sale of HP-compatible ink and toner cartridges. Lyra Research first began hearing rumors to this effect at World Expo last August. Months of relentless inquiries by Lyra finally resulted in a January 29 e-mail response from a Staples spokesperson who confirmed the story. According to the spokesperson, the reason for Staples’ decision was that “Hewlett-Packard continues to rapidly advance its technology in printing systems and ink and toner, [and] this decision offers the best solution to customers and allows Staples to focus its resources on the many other product categories where we can innovate with Staples-brand products.”
We found some convincing evidence that Staples was indeed dropping its line of HP-compatible cartridges in mid-December, when the office superstore published its January 2007 catalog. Not only were Staples-brand HP ink and toner missing from the catalog — Staples-brand Epson-compatible ink cartridges were also conspicuously absent, although the catalog offered store-brand cartridges for Canon, Dell, and Lexmark machines.
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