Canon produces chipless toners for business printers due to chip shortages

Canon has started producing chipless toner cartridges for its business printers. The company does this because of the persistent chip shortages. These are toner cartridges for business printers and multifunction printers.

Canon’s European division says it is currently facing challenges in getting enough ‘electrical components’ for its printers. In order to guarantee continued supply, the company has opted to omit the semiconductor components until normal supply volumes are returned in that area.

On the German website, Canon lists the affected printers; this usually involves a large number of imageRunner models. On its Australian support page, Canon says it will start supplying these chipless toner cartridges in Australia and New Zealand from February. It is not clear whether that timing also applies to other regions.

This step of omitting the chips in the toner cartridges may mean that the ability to check how much ink is left is no longer functioning. Canon emphasizes that customers can continue to print normally, but that there is a slightly changed user experience. The automatic toner replacement, in which Canon sends new ones based on the reading of the toner levels, is now also no longer available.

The company also provides brief instructions on how customers should deal with a device report that the toner cartridge is not recognized; that doesn’t take much more than ignoring or clicking away the notifications. The latter has to do with checking whether it concerns official toners; this step cannot be performed without the chips either.

The chip shortages do not only affect the business print market. The supply of printers for consumers has also not been at the normal level for some time.