I can't believe that the printer market has not been disrupted by someone offering a decent printer without ridiculous ongoing printer cartridge costs.
I just bought a £99 printer that will cost more than £99 in printer cartridge costs after just a few months of casual use and I did not spot any alternatives.
The alternative for most people is to buy a cheap laser printer. You don't need color for most things and the operational costs are far lower.
To answer your question, though, the profits for fairly low margin printing hardware business need to come from somewhere. Sure, you can cut the margins on ink. Now you're paying $500 for the printer whether you use it heavily or just now and then.
I got this color laser printer [1] at $179.99 in 2013 and it's still going strong. I got it specifically as a long term investment because I don't print very often and was tired of having dried-out ink every few months when I did go to print.
I'm curious how close to that price point inkjets will get if they have to turn a profit without proceeds from ink cartridge sales. We might be moving toward a point where it makes less and less sense to buy an inkjet at all.
Now you're paying $500 for the printer whether you use it heavily or just now and then.
That's how it ought to be, if a printer is USD 500 perhaps quality will rise. I hate replacing equipment every other year because product quality for home use is that abysmal.
Why should they? After all, margins is the only reason why they're producing printers at all; if the margins are bad then it would be better for them to stop producing these products as they can get more profit manufacturing something else.
Assuming you're referring to inkjet style printers - Epson did exactly that with their Ecotank printers. Big (by ink cartridge standards) tanks in the printer you fill up with relatively cheap bottled ink. Got my wife one for the homeschool classroom and it lasts a long time for very little $$.
The reason there has been no such disruption is that the current pricing model (with the bulk of the costs in the toner/ink) effectively price discriminates between low volume users and high volume users.
If toner/ink were sold at cost, then all of the profit would have to be made in the printer sale. This would cause printer manufacturers to choose the profit-maximizing price, which would be much higher than the current price. At this high price, many light-usage customers would choose not to purchase the printer, and very heavy-usage customers would enjoy a greater consumer surplus (because they would have been willing to pay much more for their high-volume printing).
So it's not that there's anything broken about the current business model — it's just the way that manufacturers can reach as many potential customers as possible. The reason that lawsuits like this one crop up is that third-party cartridge refillers are trying to undercut the printer manufacture on the cost of refills. This makes sense, and eventually we'll find an equilibrium price where third party refills cost somewhat less than "official" refills (which will instead carry more of a guarantee of effectiveness/warranty).
I just bought a £99 printer that will cost more than £99 in printer cartridge costs after just a few months of casual use and I did not spot any alternatives.