Printers are pretty difficult to manufacture compared to a laptop. They have specialized high precision parts and a lot of mechanical parts that have to work together for a particular design. A laptop can be pretty much made from off the shelf parts aside from the chassis and PCB, which you can easily have made by any number of contractors.
And I’m sure printers are probably a minefield of patents.
So it makes it not impossible for a new manufacturer to incorporate interface electronics with a core from an experienced manufacturer. The most difficult part might not be the engineering, but getting one of the old line print companies to do business at some reasonable cost with a smaller startup company.
I suspect Canon licensed that technology to HP rather than letting it be used openly. You might be able to do the same but you’ll just be another proprietary printer company.
If the market weren’t in decline, maybe. But to pipedream a little:
A standardized control board (imagine if it were something like an RPi), with modular carriage (available in several sizes, including capable of 11x17” or A3), with changeable print heads (CMYK, or just a massive black, or hell, pen plotter).
This shouldn't make sense. It's like buying a car, and then you cannot refill unbranded gas at 1.5€/L, but at 5€/L at the official dealership. Same gas, car works exactly the same, but the car refuses to start it you put unbranded gas. No wonder the money is in the gas, tagging it at 500% the price it would get in a competitive market.
The mistery is why the printers market get away with it.
A more apt analogy would be selling you a laundry washer/dryer for $100 but only accepting name brand detergent pods.
Or, what Keurig tried to do to coffee, though even they sell the machines above the printers margins.
Printers get away with it because unlike your car, laundry, or coffee maker, most people don't actually use the printer very often and can't be bothered to raise a public outcry over it.
I get what you say, but never bought the cheapest-product part. Brother printers compete in price with any HP equivalent, is not like HP is selling laser printers for $20. Maybe a 15% less than a equivalent Brother, if that.
The big money. One could still wonder if there is room for a company only interested in a tidy small profit for selling the printers (perhaps at a more expensive price, but along with a "no locked inks", "no BS", "just works" guarantees).
Absolutely not because printer patents will kill you.
There are a handful of companies that hold all the patents necessary to build a printer. If you try to build one from scratch "taking inspiration" from consumer ones you will be sued into oblivion
Patent terms for printers would be at most 20 years. Perfectly good laser printers existed >20 years ago. You can tear down an old printer and make a clone of all functional and non-artistic aspects without infringing IP. In theory, patent specifications should provide a manual to help make any once-patented aspects of the device.
Indeed, that's the goal, in part, of the patent system to make technologies available in return for a time-limited monopoly.
If yes, what other product categories is this applicable?