It is, but often for a very brief moment, it's the consumers that come up ahead - quality is high for an MVP) and prices are low (or free), as long as the startup is burning VC money as if it was hydrazine in a rocket.
Of course the money eventually runs out, and those startups are forced to do some nasty things to the customers, who may now find themselves with no one to jump to, as competitors are long dead. But hey, we're talking about printer market here. The incumbents are the leaders in nasty, underhanded, abusive business practices (as well as planned obsolescence, wastefulness, destroying the environment and the climate...) for the entire tech sector. I just can't imagine a startup making this market worse when it runs out of VC subsidies and has to actually make money. Even if it ends up killing the whole market... well, this is printers we're talking about, it's a dying market already, isn't it?
So in this one, rare case, I think it would actually work out great in the end. Of course this is also why no sane investor will fund such startups...
