Producer
HP Inc.
Global printer leader (~29-40%); LaserJet and inkjet/MFP. LaserJet marking engines sourced from Canon.
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Inputs supplied
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Goods downstream
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Facilities
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Stories
What they make
2 inputs HP Inc. supplies
Click an input to see every good that depends on it, every country that produces it, and every other company in the supply chain.
Where it shows up
Goods downstream
Essential goods that depend on something HP Inc. makes — pick one to see the full supply chain.
What else they do
Business segments
The company's full revenue map — where this supply-chain role fits within their broader business.
Personal Systems (PC)
64%Printing Hardware
12%Printing Supplies (Ink, Toner)
22%Services & Solutions
2%
Intelligence
What's known
Sourced claims about this company's role in supply chains — chokepoints, concentration, incidents, dual-use connections.
Did you know2024
HP's thermal inkjet print head technology — developed for desktop printers — has been adapted for DNA synthesis, pharmaceutical product marking, and bioprinting applications outside HP's own product lines. Agilent Technologies' SurePrint DNA microarray system uses piezoelectric inkjet print heads (parallel to HP's thermal design) to spot oligonucleotide probes at microscale density onto glass slides for genomics research. HP's own industrial inkjet platforms (HP PageWide Industrial) are used in pharmaceutical serialization printing — the machine-readable track-and-trace codes that FDA's Drug Supply Chain Security Act mandates on every pharmaceutical package sold in the US. The desktop printer supply chain and the pharmaceutical product security supply chain share core inkjet print head technology.
HP Inc. ↗Concentration2023
HP Inc.'s printer ink business generates ~$11-12B annually with 30-40% operating margins — approximately 5-6x the operating margin of the PC business. HP uses automatic firmware updates pushed to installed printers to disable third-party compatible ink cartridges (the "Dynamic Security" feature, expanded in 2022), requiring printers to accept only cartridges with authenticated HP chips. Class action lawsuits in the US (settled 2023, $1.35M) and EU investigations have challenged this practice. HP's firmware update infrastructure — designed ostensibly for security patches — serves the dual purpose of enforcing consumable supply exclusivity. HP's printer supply chain dependency is partially a software-enforced construct, not purely a hardware one.
HP Inc. ↗Origin2024
HP Inc. was created on November 1, 2015, when Hewlett-Packard Company completed its separation into two independent public companies: HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ, inheriting printers and PCs) and Hewlett Packard Enterprise (NYSE: HPE, inheriting servers, networking, and services). The split was driven by the thesis that slow-decline businesses (printing, PC) and fast-growth businesses (cloud, services) had incompatible capital allocation requirements and management cadences. HP Inc. took the Hewlett-Packard brand, the garage-in-Palo-Alto mythology, and a business where >80% of profits came from selling consumables (ink and toner) to printers given away near cost — one of the most defensible razor-blade business models in technology.
HP Inc. ↗