HP’s Next Step in Growing Printers? Cutting Contractor Use
Date: June 28, 2010
New York, NY -- Given the economy of the last eighteen months or so, scaling back where one can seems only natural. HP is no different, during the boom time they were able to ship a lot of units, but were “probably not efficienct” says HP exec Vyomesh Joshi, but now they are seeking to take that money and invest it in other avenues such as research and sales. Given HP’s latest innovation of ePrint, we can only wonder at what Mr. Joshi and his team will come up with next.
Generally speaking, while product design is handled in house, the manufacturing processes of companies like HP and Apple are usually outsourced to other companies who are able to manage large factories in less expensive countries. HP’s most lucrative business is its imaging and printing division which makes up “about a fifth of its revenue but about a third of its operating profit.”
The new ePrint products that HP has announced and will be releasing for sale shortly and should aid HP in reaching their previously announced goal of a double-digit percentage increase in printer units sold in 2010 from 2009, according to Joshi.
On a related note, along with the new printers, HP has a new app store to work with its web-enabled printers. The app store is designed to be open, so people will be able to support their own apps. HP will take 30% of the profit gained in sales from the app and the developer will get the remaining 70%. Mr. Joshi said, “‘If we try to develop all the software from the U.S., it's going to take years.’” He further stated, “‘Because we are making it open, there'll be some smart young kid in college who'll figure out what is the best thing for printers.’”
Mr. Joshi also openly disagreed with the idea that printers were going to be a thing of the past due to people relying more on electronic communication means. When asked about deforestation supposedly being caused by our society’s reliance on paper, he said that computers are not any more green that paper, and in fact, “ ‘This (paper) is more green than anything else.’”
