It’s not just the ink, but the plastic (and whatever electronics are necessary) in the cartridge as well.
Also, do Canon ink cartridges contain the print head as well? I know HP and Lexmark ones do, which is why they used to be so much more expensive than other companies’ inks. Then again, they did have one advantage; if you didn’t use your printer regularly and the heads clogged, then you could just replace the ink cartridge instead of having to get a new printer.
Also, I believe printer companies believe in the old Schick marketing strategy; give away the razors (printers) and make the money on the blades (ink). There are some cases where it is actually cheaper to buy a new printer than to buy ink for an older one.
If you believe it’s so over-priced, then go ahead and start manufacturing and distributing it yourself.
What you’ll see is that you’re not actually paying for the toner. You’re paying for wages, and factories, and shipping and packaging. You’re also subsidizing the cost of under-priced printers. All of these things are necessary in order to deliver a tiny amount of ink at a reasonable profit margin.
The ‘open market’ isn’t interested in ‘reasonable profit’. It’s interested in what the market will bear. Which often has nothing to do with what’s reasonable.
In the long run, what the market will bear is a reasonable profit, nothing more and nothing less. Printer companies aren’t awash in cash, and the amount of ink in a printer cartridge is entirely irrelevant to the quality of the product. It’s like complaining that there’s fewer screws in cell phones nowadays or cars are lighter than they were 20 years ago.
My printer takes 4 cartridges, black plus the 3 mixer colors. A new cartridge costs $27. A new printer with a complete set of cartridges costs $99. So for me it is literally cheaper to buy a new printer if I need all 4 cartridges at the same time.
New printers come with non-standard cartridges, somewhere between 10% and 25% full. So when you buy a new $99 printer, you are only getting $10-$25 worth of cartridges.
This is all part of the process to get people locked into buying the cartridges for that printer. The printers themselves are loss-leaders. The money is in the cartridges.
I think the theory is that if it can be done significantly cheaper, and still be profitable, someone else will enter the market and prices will fall. If that doesn’t happen, it’s because you it can’t be done much cheaper or the manufacturers are colluding.
Personally, having grown up in the era of typing on a typewriter, I’m willing to pay almost any price for a printer that allows things to magically appear without counting characters to center a title and the god awful way we had to figure out how to make footnotes fit at the bottom of the page.
And you can buy refilled cartridges for the major brands, at significantly discounted prices. You can also buy ink and refill them yourself. That may be worth it for some people, although I’ve heard that often the printing isn’t as consistent.
I agree with The Joker and the Thief above: it’s not like printer companies are making huge profits off of this. There is plenty of competition in the printer industry. If you think you can undercut the current printer companies with cheaper ink, go ahead and try. Actually, there is one company that does sort of do that: Kodak. Kodak ink is significantly cheaper than other brands. And while kodak printers are are certainly doing fine, it’s not like they’ve taken over the market with their strategy.
Just guess how much it would cost to fill up your car at the gas station if you not only bought the gas, but a new tank, fuel pump, fuel lines, injectors, fuel level sender and gas gauge.