ConsumerIT - For Europe's High Volume PC Retailers, Distributors & Builders

Printers. There's a product category you haven't given a lot of thought about lately. It's all about making money on ink cartridges, right?

Let's look at Lexmark. Though it's a printer giant sprung whole from the loins of IBM, Lexmark is relatively small player in the printer market compared to giants like HP, Canon, Epson and the new aggressor, Samsung.

Lexmark had 5 million inkjets sold (3.6% market share) in the 88 million unit inkjet printer market in 2010. It sold 1.7 million laser printers (only 3.7% market share) in the 46 million unit laser printer market.

Naturally you think the company needs to make the transition from inkjet to laser printers: in a few years, its inkjet printer sales will shrink to fewer than 100,000 inkjet printers and laser printer sales should rise to nearly 3 million.

Of course, the mix of the lucrative printer cartridge sales must follow the changing mix of printers over the forecast period. But less printing overall means less ink cartridges, too...

Convergence Technologies has plans for what it claims is "the first, truly universal household remote"-- the Bridge, compatible with not only standard TVs and STBs, but also PCs and game consoles.

Looking like a games controller, the Bridge combines a QWERTY keyboard, an analog stick handling mouse control and x4 shoulder buttons.

Control signals come via IR and RF4CE protocol, meaning it is compatible with around 95% of TVs from the last 3 years, as well as the Playstation 3 console (Wii and XBox 360 compatibility is still pending further review).

Convergence are currently looking for development funding on Kickstarter-- and hope to raise $59000 in 45 days' time. Should funding be complete, the company will sell the Bridge for under $100.

Go The Bridge (Kickstarter.com)

One can describe the Autumn EU economic growth forecast with a single word-- austere. The title "Growth at a Standstill" is bad enough, and the EC report says the going might get even worse.

In a few words-- EU GDP will stagnate into 2012, while 2012 EU growth is forecast at around 0.5% before reaching 1.5% by 2013. Inflation will return to below 2% and unemployment will remain at around 9.5%.

Recession risks are not negligible either.

The Eu forecasts annual 2012 GDP growth will reach 0.6% in EU and 1.3% in the euro zone. No member state group will escape the slowdown despite varying growth differences.

Public finances will eventually improve-- but only gradually.

The main drivers of 2011 inflation, energy prices, are set to gradually decrease, with headline inflation falling back below 2% in 2012. The EU expects wages will only grow "moderately," while persistent slack in the economy continues holding back underlying price pressures.

The report lists 3 main risks weighting down the EU and euro-area economy-- continued debt-related uncertainty, the weakness of the financial industry and sluggish world trade. Potentially, the future can go both ways, withe either slower growth or a faster-than-assumed return to confidence.

Go EU Autumn Forecast 2011-2013: Growth at a Standstill

It was a long time coming-- Kesa manages to find a willing Comet buyer in the shape of "Hailey," a group of companies headed by retailer turnaround specialists OpCapita.

The price of sale? "An aggregate consideration of £2."

Only two pounds? That's not even 1 pound per letter for this famous UK brand, but the deal gets worse...

Kesa also had to give the new owners a dowry worth £50M. And it gets to keep the liability of paying out on the Comet Benefit Pension Scheme.

Kesa chariman David Newlands puts it bluntly-- "We had to pay £50m to get the business away. We will write it off as having no value." That's £10M for each letter in the Comet brand...and further evidence (as if any was needed) of a UK retail sector best described as "dire."

Kesa will only get something out of "investing" £50M if OpCapita manages to "flip" Comet to a new owner for more than £70M.

In H1 2011, Comet sales fell by 18.6% on a like-for-like. OpCapita claims it has "no intention to make redundancies" nor will it implement "a significant store closure programme." Yet everyone expects some of Comet's 248 retail outlets to close...

Meanwhile, KESA group is expected to deliver a first half retail loss of around €11m, including a retail loss of around €26m at Comet.

Go Kesa Electricals: Proposed Disposal of Comet