Wide-Format Imaging

HP’s been talking about Print 2.0 for the past several months, but what is it, really?

According to Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of the company’s Imaging and Printing Group during Hewlett-Packard’s Print 2.0 press summit back in May and again in August, it a future vision and it’s designed to look at the future of printing and it’s movement—from the desktop to the web—which is creating a world of “mash” media. This, then, enables people to take all forms of digital content—words, photos, videos, songs—and mash them together.

“We’re here to talk about the new era of imaging and printing,” said Joshi. “We want to look at future to look at how to grow the business. Internet, intranet—the net will be the key enabler. It will change the industry.”

The business has already started to shift, according to Joshi, from printer to printing.

According to the figures Hewlett-Packard supplied during this summit, worldwide the amount of printed pages in 2006 was 49 trillion pages: nine percent were digital (creation to digital to consumption/printing) whereas 91 percent were printed via analog means. By 2010, the numbers are estimated to grow to about 53 trillion pages, 10 percent of which will be digital.

If you make the transfer to dollars (or opportunity) you’re talking about a market in 2006 of $240 billion and $296 billion in 2010.

But the market keeps changing.

“The Web will play a very important role,” said Joshi. “The web empowers the customers to create the content. We need to make sure we understand that and how to increase the pie. We want to get all that content that is created by users and customers and rive them to printing.”

But what does this all mean for print service providers?

I’m not exactly sure. While I can see the consumer application (i.e. giving the consumer the choice to print photos at home, or at a retailer, or via a larger output facility), I haven’t quite gotten my head around the PFP/PSP part of the equation.

According to HP, it’s about community. It’s about joining those who create with those who print.

What do you think? Is this viable? Do-able? Are you already part of Print 2.0?

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 9:55 am and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.