Kodak CEO Disses Australian Printer Technology

Before heading out on stage with Kodak CEO Antonio Perez on Friday, we got talking about the Memjet printer technology that Australian Kia Silverbrook is about to unleash.

I'd talked with Silverbrook about it a few times. His systems uses a page-wide array of ink-shooting nozzles instead of just one nozzle, and, he says, this allows a cheap home printer to print out a page a second.

Well, Perez doesn't think much of Silverbrook's work -- which has been a decade in the making. Perez told me that every printer company -- H-P, Kodak, etc. -- has page-wide array technology in their R&D centers. He said he looked at Silverbrook's system and found little of interest. The page-wide systems don't work as consumer products because the nozzles, which don't move, can't be cleaned. (When the nozzle on your printer moves off to the side after printing, it ducks into a little service station that cleans it.) Inevitably, Perez says, some nozzles in an array will clog or fail, and that will mess up the image on the printed page.

It's fascinating when these clashes of ideas happen. Silverbrook passionately believes he has a created a disruptive printer technology. Perez seemed completely dismissive of it. Both are obviously smart, informed thinkers. Hard for someone like me to hear two completely different sides like that and know who's right. (You know how it is -- usually the person in front of you at the time seems right!)

This will be interesting to watch. Silverbrook plans to start pushing Memjet in mid-2008.

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