Memjet to hit markets in 2009

Memjet was the buzz word in the beginning of 2007, when the Australian Silverbrook announced its newest technology able to produce 60 ppm. The speed of the new printing technology was due to a specially designed print head. Memjet was told to be a breakthrough in the printing industry and it was supposed to hit a couple of markets: home printing, retail and wide scale printing. The Australian company promised to set up a $200 printer by the end of 2008, but as one could see no Memjet was at the market by then.

At the opening of this year, Silverbrook Research presented a prototype of a consumer printer with Memjet inside at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Kim Beswick, Memjet's VP of marketing, said that, despite some delays, printers using Memjet technology would be on the US market later this year, before coming to Australia in early 2010."We've had inkjet and laser for 25 years and Memjet is essentially a new generation of printing," she said. "It's a second per page and there's almost no warm-up time, and it prints that continuously - there's no difference in how fast the first page prints versus the fifth page. "Existing color printers capable of printing a color page every second are large enterprise models costing in excess of $10,000.

Beswick said Memjet allowed printer manufacturers to produce compact home models with similar speeds in the $300-$500 price range, which is higher than promised initially. She also said they were ideal for home users, particularly those who frequently made prints of their digital photos. Silverbrook Research began developing Memjet in 1994 but was only ready to commercialize it in 2006.

The reason why Memjet has not yet hit world markets is probably that the Australian company did not get any agreement with OEMs for mass printer production.

Reference: www.stuff.co.nz

Key words: Memjet, printer market, ink printers