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Engadget has a post today about a new HP Color Laserjet printer that is so revolutionary that no one can buy it. The printer is the first output (pun intended) of a $1.4 billion bet on next generation printer technology. The problem that HP has found is that the print technology is too good.

So how can a technology be held back because it is too good? The Engadget articles says that HP can’t figure out how to make money on the printer because it completely throws off the economics of the printing industry. The printer industry follows the old razor blade theory of pricing, whereby they give the printer away and make all their money back on the ink that you have to buy to run the printer.

HP’s new printer is so frugal on the ink that HP can’t mark it up enough to get a decent return on investment. So, they are simply renting the machines and providing the ink to high volume customers. HP’s basically restricting a revolutionary product in order to preserve their business model.

The business model may be under attack anyway. In February, Kodak announced that it was introducing a line of printers whose whole selling point was cheap refills. Walgreens has begun refilling ink cartridges en masse attempting to take over an industry that has been threatened a number of times by the printer companies backhanded tactics.

It’s funny that a technology company is fighting so hard to preserve a pre-digital age business model. We’ve seen HP fight with media firms that attempt to restrict their content to protect their business models despite customers telling them over and over again that the business model is dead and they need to adapt. Hopefully, HP will listen to customers and allow a technology that saves customers money to thrive. It would be a huge competitive advantage for HP to tell customers that they can get inkjet quality prints with laser quickness and cost.

But right now they can’t see the forest from the trees and they want to protect the business model that they are comfortable with rather than do something to rock the boat. The boat is going to be rocked and HP needs to be the one rocking rather than trying to hold on. They are the 800 lb. gorilla of the industry and they have the most to lose (it’s what is keeping HP afloat at this point). But first they have to recognize no industry leader stays that way forever without working for it.