Hewlett-Packard, the biggest printer maker, is cutting prices on low-end printers. Fiorina said those reductions will continue.
"Pricing could get easily worse from here," Lexmark Chief Executive Paul Curlander said Monday. Inkjet printer prices dropped 15 percent from a year ago and laser printers declined 10 percent, he said.
Hewlett-Packard has said it won't lower prices on PCs, even amid drops at rivals like Dell Computer Corp meant to lure buyers and bolster sales during the slump in demand.
That's made it tougher for Hewlett-Packard. Its share of the PC market fell to 6.8 percent in the second quarter from 7.3 percent a year earlier.
Dell, Compaq and Gateway Inc all have fired thousands of workers this year as demand falls and economic growth slows down worldwide.
International Business Machines Corp, the biggest computer maker, is the only large PC company that hasn't cut jobs.
Hewlett-Packard in January said it would cut 2 percent of its marketing staff, and in June said it would eliminate 3,000 of its 14,000 management jobs.
Those moves resulted in 1,000 firings, with the rest of the workers moved into other jobs at the company.
The computer maker said it expects to save US$500 million a year from the reduction announced today.
Before this year, the company hadn't made significant job cuts since the early 1980s.
More then 80,000 workers signed up for voluntary pay cuts this quarter, and Hewlett-Packard said it will save US$130 million during the rest of the fiscal year as a result.
It's too soon to say when business will improve, Fiorina said. Computer-related companies such as Intel Corp have said demand will rebound in the next six months.
"I don't expect a recovery in the second half of 2001," Fiorina said.
"I don't think we can call when a recovery is going to occur, but it's not going to be a rapid hockey stick up and to the right."
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