please just sell me a rock-durable/repairable, PS/PCL-compatible, easily-refillable printer (I know you can, you used to make these when I was a kid) for whatever a price which satisfies you and leave me alone with it forever. I'm not an investment, I'm a deal, a good old "right here right now" kind.
Or wait... actually I am also an investment because, if satisfied, I will convince almost every client and friend of mine to buy one or more printers of the same model (now I do so for Brother but there's room to compete in quality).
Or maybe go the Lexmark way - sell dirt-cheap printers to up-sell expensive ink cartridges. This also is a fair deal some will be happy to choose because the printer itself is so cheap. As long as the carriage head is replaceable and won't clog to death when not used often enough.
But in whatever a case - no cloud/app bullshit please, just plain drivers.
One revenue stream is not enough now, for anyone. You can't sell a widget. It seems shareholders now demand you maximize:
* original sale of hardware, sometimes loss leader
* subscription for cloud service
* subscription for supplies/refills
* advertising to end user eyeballs, direct psyops
* exfiltrate and sell end user data
* require phone app which includes more surveillance, location, etc
Apparently I'm not alone wanting it. I have little idea of the market potential but I believe there is some.
Apparently there are at least some investors and makers who believe the same. For example this is how they market Matic[1] (a cloud-free smart vacuum robot). Which I'm probably going to buy (unless I discover it's not bullshit-free enough) although it's expensive. I still have no robot vacuum just because every not-horribly-dumb model depends on a cloud (even though they don't have to - some are possible to uncloud but I have no time for this).
The same applies to social networks etc - they try to reach every person in the world by offering free service at a cost of the user being made a product. Let me pay money but respect me as a customer, not a zombie.
I just got a Shark XL vacuum which mostly works without its app and cloud, you just push its Clean button and it goes off and comes back to dock when it's done. But if you want schedule and mapping, you're stuck. There is a Home Assistant integration for it, but that just talks to their cloud (not well). Interestingly, that cloud saas is shared among a number of vacuum makers so it's not open, but it there's always hoping.
They don't want that done deal. They don't want your one time payment. They want you paying. They want perpetual payments from you. They want you paying constantly every year, every month, every day. They want rent. Perpetual rent seeking. Their printers are just the cheapest mechanism they managed to come up with to extract that rent from you.