zlacker

>>rntn+(OP)
How come printers don't have cheap Chinese device duplicates? The fundamental laser patents are from the 80s and 90s. Surely a reimplementation of these exist somewhere. I would gladly AliExpress one of these and just USB to print.

>>renewi+qf
China can't make them cheaper than HP and Brother dump them for, I suspect.

They could probably make knockoff LaserJet IIIs, but nobody wants enough to fire up an entire line.

>>bombca+7g
I checked this too. Alibaba is too busy selling newer, but related, technologies (laser cutters, t-shirt printers, 3d printers, medical devices, etc, etc) at what look like reasonable margins.

I'm sure the same factories could make zero-margin laser or inkjet printers, but why target a shrinking, obsolete market when you could use the same employee expertise to build things for growing, high margin markets?

I'm guessing buggy whip and carriage bolt manufacturers charged crazy markups for 10-20 years after the Model T came out. I think we're witnessing something similar (especially for inkjets that target document sized printouts).