Well, HP Tries Another Way to Sell Ink
July 8, 2008
Pity the magazine industry. Paper costs are rising. Writers resist working for peanuts. Customers are shifting to online. Students don’t read magazines the way their parents did. I used to work for a newspaper and a magazine publisher, and I am now almost free of traditional media.
Hewlett Packard wants to sell ink. After buying Exstream Software for $1.2 billion, the company is now pushing in a new direction. Navigate to http://www.magcloud.com. The name evokes the sizzle of cloud computing and binds in the now dying world of magazine publishing. I think HP is trying to imbue traditional media with a sense that it’s not too late.
The idea behind Mag Cloud is that HP has big ink guzzling machines and software that allow a publisher to print a magazine for one person. In theory, the system can generate 10,000 different magazines if a publisher has 10,000 subscribers who provide enough data to make personalization possible.
Ink makes HP’s money mills work. IBM has wrested the server crown away from HP. Vendors like Asus and a slow moving Dell Computer challenge the HP PC revenue. What’s the big high tech company to do? implement the King Gillette model. Sell a bigger razor to hold that $8,000 a gallon razor blade.
Stephen Arnold, July 8, 2008
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