New York, NY -- Over the next few weeks we are going to spend some time reaching out to printer companies and asking for short interviews similar to the one below, but tailored to the specific company. The answers to our questions for this interview are courtesy of Tuan Tran, Vice President & General Manager, Inkjet Consumer Solutions, Imaging Printing Group for HP.
Who deserves the credit for the idea of ePrinting? Was it Mr. Joshi and his team alone? Why ePrint, and why now?
Thirty years ago Vyomesh Joshi was one of many engineers who created printer command language (PCL) to allow printers to talk to computers. In 2010 Vyomesh Joshi led his team to realize his vision of Print 2.0 by creating a print language for the cloud – ePCL. ePrint is the technology that empowers this new language to work across all HP printers and all email devices. There are several reasons why the market is ripe for ePrint – digital content is exploding 10 times by 2012.There is a proliferation of mobile devices and we know that up to 78 percent of people with smartphones want to print from them. Also by next year printing from the internet will be the greatest driver of prints, growing at a rate of 35%. People want an easy way to print their content, anywhere, anytime and HP is making that a reality with its web connected ePrint printers.
An article appeared yesterday alleging HP scooped Google on cloud printing: http://bit.ly/chaZTw . But, the release, http://bit.ly/c19IYE on your website says that HP and Google were partners in this endeavor. Is there a little truth in both accounts?
HP has created its own print cloud for people to leverage and customize to allow content to flow and be stored virtually. The idea is to have people be able to access and print content from anywhere – at home, at a public location, at work or in a retail store. To deliver this service HP has committed to launching a full line of web connected printers that are cloud aware. This is where HP and Google have been sharing ideas and best practices. HP is delivering the first printers that talk to Google cloud without the need for a proxy device. This is not an exclusive deal but more two leading innovators coming together to ensure a seamless experience for the customer. HP is ahead of the competition in delivering cloud aware printers and Google hopes to work with the industry to make cloud printing ubiquitous via open standards.
How many of these ePrint printers does HP expect to produce (in terms of different models)?
We are rolling out web connectivity across our entire line-up and are expecting to ship tens of millions of printers by 2011. The percentage of web connected device in market will grow rapidly and that will open up a whole world of opportunities for our partners and our customers.
What other trends or new technologies does HP see coming down the line both for themselves and the printer industry as a whole? Can HP compete with Memjet for printer speed?
Printing growth comes from a variety of areas, some trends seem counter-intuitive such as the shift in the way people consumer content online but these open new avenues to HP:
Applications driving content - Based on the emergence of social networking and other social applications and the fact that user generated content is massive driver of apps – from Facebook to YouTube, these models are changing how consumers interact with the web. People want quick touch access to relevant content – and through print apps they can now retrieve it formatted and customized for their needs.
Digital Content Exploding - The explosion of content will change how customers react in the category. Expectations are ballooning and customers have increasingly higher expectations of the devices they interact with as they want to connect anywhere, anytime, therefore driving the printed page growth.
Mobility Goes Mainstream - Customers expect access in the palm of their hand—anytime, anywhere, whether this is music/photos/video/apps/documents or shopping online. This behavior presents an opportunity for printing to help people on the go access, share and print their photos and files.
Regarding printer speed for enterprise, having been in the business for over 25 years, HP carefully balances speed, quality, paper-handling and many other considerations across all of our printing systems. Our goal is not centered on just one of these but the entire mix that can provide the best overall experience for our customers. While we could create printers with extremely high print speeds, they wouldn’t necessarily meet the other important customer requirements like exceptional image quality, duty cycle, paper-handing, finishing, and many other important attributes.
In the NYT article, it says that " It expects to sell more than 15 million of the Web printers by next year". Is that based on what has happened when HP has produced new printer technology in the past, or is that because HP feels this printer technology is that much better than what they have produced before?
This number was derived from analyst predictions for HP printer sales based on past performance and current position in the market.
