“It is a cool racket. Sell a decent ink-jet with some attractive features for $150 or so, then charge $40 or more for a simple replacement cartridge”
But it can go both ways. People like myself who minimize printing come out ahead, maybe needing one new cartridge every 2 years. But frequent users get killed.
In any case, if they now have to price printers without the possibility of significant financial recovery from media (that’s inside talk), then printers will likely go up in price quite a bit.
Plus the other facet to the mfgrs subsidizing the printers with the consumables is that you can afford to have multiple printers for backup or dedicated to different media and you don’t pay much more because you’re not using more ink/toner.