The OEM reported this affected its Printing unit’s sales figures.
OPI (subscription) reported on the OEM’s quarterly results, which The Recycler discussed last week, specifically on the fact that sales of cartridge supplies fell by six percent in the second quarter due to a “slowdown in toner sales”.
As a consequence, the OEM’s Printing unit saw sales fall by four percent to $5.8 billion (€4.2 billion), with hardware in the unit seeing a three percent increase in commercial units and flat figures for consumer units. The Printing division also reported a profit of $1.1 billion (€805.8 million), which was a 3.6 percent increase on the same quarter last year.
HP’s CEO Meg Whitman stated that the fall in supplies sales had been down to a “lack of investment in laser printers under a previous management regime”, which was now “impacting the laser hardware installed base” and thus toner sales. In turn, Whitman noted that HP had “been late to enter” the MPS market, though it was “catching up fast”, while ink was doing “reasonably well”.
The OEM cut 16,000 more jobs after announcing its quarterly results last week, adding to the huge numbers of job cuts that it had already confirmed in 2013.