Hewlett-Packard is selling fewer laser printers, and seems to be quite happy with the situation.

HP says it’s happy with the installed printer base for the short-term because it means selling fewer low-margin servers.

HP’s Imaging and Printing group had revenue of $7.5 billion during the quarter, down 1 percent compared to last year. An 8 percent drop in number of consumer printers sold and a 9 percent drop in sales of commercial sales were offset by a 9 percent rise in sales of supplies.

At the same time, unit sales of multifunction printers rose 25 percent during the quarter, while unit sales of wireless printers rose 54 percent, according to HP.

Despite the overall drop in servers, HP is increasing its market share, which is making it easier to sell supplies.

For instance, increasing sales of wireless printers to home users may result in fewer printers being sold, but not in the amount of pages being printed.

The healthy installed base is more important to HP than selling more printers.

More than half of HP’s overall profits come from its installed base, a situation which helps insulate the company from dropping printer sales.