HP's Print 2.0 and the Graphic Arts

Commentary by Andrew Tribute

June 5, 2007 -- At the HP annual Imaging and Printing Conference for industry analysts held in New York the company unveiled "Print 2.0," the strategy for making printing relevant and empowering as both personal and professional content increasingly moves from the desktop to the web. This is designed to link up with the new developments on the web known as Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is the empowering of the user to participate in the creation of web content through social networking, blogs, photo sites, etc.

This strategy that is well detailed on the HP web site (www.hp.com/go/2007ipgconference) is defined to make it easier for web users to print content from the web. For HP it is a strategy to increase the volume of printing done on its equipment and to increase its share of the increasing volume of digital printing. HP is generating a number of new services to assist users and is also working with developers to make it easier for them to add printing to their web sites. In this case it is not just printing but selective printing to allow a user to select the content they want to print and how they want to print it.

Examples quoted at the conference were work HP has carried out with the ViaMichelin's website to offer customers improved map-printing by better aligning what is seen on-screen with what is printed on the page, as well as with how maps are used once people are on the road. HP also has teamed with leading weblog software and services company SixApart, Ltd., creators of Movable Type, the blogging platform, to enable bloggers to add a print button on their blogs. Movable Type powers many of the world's most popular blogs.

HP has tested out this Print 2.0 strategy within their digital photographic imaging business. At this stage however no other business within the HP Imaging and Printing Group has implemented anything utilizing the web to enhance their operations. This was very graphically and embarrassingly demonstrated in a Q&A session at the conference with seven senior vice presidents when they were asked how they were using the web for enhancing the operations of their business areas. All of them with the exception of Larry Lesley who heads up digital photography and entertainment had no answer to the question. For these other six business operations Print 2.0 is a strategy for the future - not a current implementation.

In addition to this empowering of web users to get into print, HP also added a range of new service offerings for enhancing and managing the print services of different types of corporate, government and educational organisations. In this it is in reality more in a catch up mode to match the offerings of competitors like Kodak, Oce and Xerox.

Does this have any impact on the graphic arts market? In the empowering of the web users probably not much impact. Sophisticated web sites, such as HP's Snapfish photo site already have very advanced printing capabilities that drive print to specific graphic arts companies. Such sites have realized the impact of web to print and build a service that uses it. The area that Print 2.0 will mainly interest is where users will predominantly print to their desktop printers that HP hopes will mainly be HP inkjet printers. Since most of these web sites are very colorful, this should sell a large volume of HP ink. The new service offerings however should generate a substantial volume of printing that HP hopes will go in the direction of their HP Indigo customers. As HP does not sell its HP Indigo presses into most government, corporate or educational organizations, these services are most likely to push work under managed contracts to HP Indigo press users.

This however brings up a very interesting point and this is the impact that the latest HP printing technology could have on the graphic arts market. This is the Edgeline inkjet technology that has recently been launched in the HP CM8050/8060 Color MFP product. This is the first of a range of new color printing products targeted at the “enterprise” space that will be introduced over the next year or so. The CM8050/8060 Color MFP is a printer with a scanner that runs at around 50 pages/minute (ppm) and costs in the region of $25,000. (It is difficult to define the price as it depends upon the type of service contract a customer has with HP). The printer is a good quality printer, at this stage not as good as 50-ppm xerographic offering from Konica Minolta, Ricoh or Xerox, but it is cheaper than these products. What is interesting however is the potential of the Edgeline technology.

From my assessment of Edgeline, I expect to see a higher quality version probably with six colors, and with the ability to print a B3 size document without slowing down as the CM8050/8060 Color MFP does, and with a speed of around 70 ppm. Such a product could easily sell for perhaps as low as $50,000, and would have great interest for the graphic arts markets. At present HP's entry level product for graphic arts digital printing is the HP Indigo press 1050. This press that runs at only 35 color A4 ppm sells for around $150,000 and in reality is uncompetitive when compared with the new 40 - 60 ppm products from other companies. It only has its high image quality going for it.

I believe that if the Edgeline technology is introduced in a product as I predict above, that this could have a significant impact in changing the graphic arts marketplace. HP maintains that Edgeline is a technology for the "enterprise" but I think HP may have in future a range of products that could have real attraction in future for graphic arts.

What do you think of Andy's view? Please offer your feedback to Andy via email: tribute@attributes.co.uk.

Attributes Associates is an internationally oriented consulting company specializing in marketing and technology issues for the printing, publishing and media markets. The Managing Partner of Attributes Associates is Andrew Tribute, who is recognized internationally as one of the world's leading authorities on these industries and subjects.

Attributes' client base comprises a large number of publishers and printers as well as a significant number of industry vendors. In most cases consulting is carried out at high level to assist such organizations in the selection and adoption of technology, or to define ongoing business strategies covering the likely future directions of the markets.

Attributes have been in the forefront of technology changes and market developments from the time it started in 1984. It has been involved in assisting both users and vendors through the changes in these industries since then. This has included desktop publishing; PostScript imaging; changes in working practices in newspaper and magazine publishing; adoption of digital printing and computer to plate imaging in commercial printing; and more recently the impact of the Internet on publishing and printing markets.

Andrew Tribute is a visiting Professor at University of the Arts London.

Reach Andy via email: tribute@attributes.co.uk.



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