The Canons have been priced notably low for quite a while, especially in comparison to other printers of similar width. As far as I can tell, it's just building market share... I'd put the iPF6100 (which I own) up against anything on the market in the 24-inch class. Every printer has its own gamut strengths and weaknesses now - none is better across the board than the others. The overall gamut size may go, by a tiny amount, to the newest Epsons, but not even a 7900 will catch an iPF on blues (the dedicated blue ink makes a big difference). Canon could easily charge $3000 for the iPF6100 if they had Epson's dominant market position, or even $2500-$2700 if they were in HP's position (very well known in graphic arts, but not in photography). They're trying to get photographers to take a risk with their attractive pricing (plus the iPF is not quite as feature-laden as the $4000 Epson (huge cartridges, paper feed) or the $3300 HP (spectrophotometer, hard disk). If anything, HP and Epson need to release printers that are more price-competitive with Canon for individual photographers and smaller studios...