HP working to unchain people from their printers

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April 21, 2000
Web posted at: 8:27 a.m. EDT (1227 GMT)

by Elinor Abreu

(IDG) -- In an age when people expect to be moving from paper to digital documents, Hewlett-Packard is reinventing its printing and imaging business to enable people to print from devices other than printers.

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HP also is partnering with a host of companies to enable people to print items that don't fit the typical document description, such as stamps, airplane and concert tickets, newspapers and even books.

"We're inventing the underlying infrastructure to enable all sorts of appliances to be print-capable," CEO Carly Fiorina said during a news conference today. "You can point a cell phone at a printer and print directions to a restaurant," or you can use a personal digital assistant to print out a price list or e-mail.

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The move is a sign that after resting on the laurels of its hugely successful printer business, HP may finally "get the Net." Turning the staid printer into a distribution appliance accessible by devices other than just computers will likely help HP maintain its dominance and capture further market share.

HP's goal: "The simple beige box becomes an information appliance," according to Fiorina. With its transition to printing "e-services," HP expects to garner the lion's share of what International Data Corp. estimates will be a $130 billion printing and imaging business by 2004. Currently, $40 billion is spent on printing and imaging worldwide.

To accomplish its task, HP announced a series of partnership announcements with: FedEx, to turn printers into personal shipping stations; ImageTag, for storing, retrieving and sending documents using bar-coded labels; NewspaperDirect, for printing international newspapers locally on demand; Mimeo.com, for receiving documents over the Internet to be printed and bound; Stamps.com, for printing stamps; and Encryptix.com, for printing tickets.

HP also announced a new print-management appliance, the HP JetDirect 4000, which will enable IS managers to direct print queues through a browser. Moving printing traffic to a dedicated appliance and away from other file-server traffic on the network will improve network management and speed up printing, according to Carolyn Ticknor, head of HP's printing and imaging business.

HP is already on its way to making printing from multiple devices easy. Digital photographs can be beamed into certain HP printers, and the new HP Jornada 540 Series Color PocketPC allows users to print directly to their printers.

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