Paper and ink have long been the bread and butter of the printer industry, and the explosive growth in web content, digital photography, and wider availability of affordable colour printers have all contributed to strong growth in shipments of both consumer and business printers driving more and more sales of these consumables. However, today's digital printing landscape is changing: the home is losing ground as a location for printing photos to retailers or online services, not to mention the increasing propensity for consumers to share and manage their images online. But what continues to drive printed output, both at home and in enterprises is the internet.
The web is increasingly becoming a platform for user driven content and collaboration through so called Web 2.0 technologies such as blogs, wikis and information feeds via RSS. As a result, digital content is becoming more dynamic, interactive, and shared. Also, it is presenting a shift in the way users create and print content. This presents a challenge to printer vendors who now need to find more innovative ways of encouraging users to continue to print as well as view and share content online, whilst ensuring that the printing experience is reliable and cost effective, and presenting themselves as being "green."
This is the central theme to HP's vision of Print 2.0, which they are heralding as a new era in printing. HP estimates that by 2010, 53 trillion digital pages will be printed, an opportunity valued at more than $296 billion - and HP wants to continue to capture a significant share of this pie. Whilst this page volume represents an opportunity for every printer and copier vendor, it also is a stark reminder that this level of paper consumption undeniably brings with it huge financial and environmental costs.
However, part of HP's Print 2.0 strategy is going some way to reduce the inherent paper wastage, and therefore the increased costs often experienced with web printing. We are all familiar with the frustrations of printing a web page only to get an extra blank page with a header or footer of text. Through its acquisition of Tabblo, HP now offers a range of capabilities aimed at making web printing more user-friendly and less wasteful. These capabilities range from HP Smart Web Print (a free download to the Tabblo Print Toolkit) to an embeddable website widget and corresponding web service that enables web designers to incorporate print functionality into new and existing websites. In this latter case, HP has for instance collaborated with ViaMichelin to enhance the printing functionality of its maps.
HP also sees an opportunity in blog printing and has teamed with leading weblog software and services company SixApart, Ltd., creators of Movable Type, a provider of blog platforms, to enable bloggers to add a "print" button on their blogs with the capabilities outlined above. It is arguable as to whether a blog should ever be printed out, as it is primarily a web-based experience, but at least offering the capability means that print is optimised, and wastage is minimised.
HP is decisively taking the lead from other printer vendors in addressing the shortcomings of web printing. Although focusing on the technology to improve the user experience of web printing, HP is not purely focusing on capturing more pages for printing on its own devices, as the provided services support any vendor's printer. Together with extensions HP is making to its Snapfish digital content platform, it is also enhancing its reputation in the digital content creation world, whilst being product agnostic- a very different approach to its competitors who are primarily focused on products to lead their marketing strategy.
HP has clearly recognised that the digital document printing landscape is changing for consumers, but what impact does the vision of Print 2.0 have for businesses? Quocirca believes that optimising web printing is as relevant for businesses as it is for consumers, and that Print 2.0 needs to be taken further to offer them real value. It needs to incorporate other technology which can reduce unnecessary or costly printing. This could be through better management tools that give better visibility into printing costs or controlling access to high cost colour printers through better advice on usage of duplex, black and white, or lower quality colour output.
HP's Web Jet Admin tool looks a good fit here, as does its renewed push on managed services, which enables organisations to understand the true cost of printing. It is not clear if HP's vision of Print 2.0 fully leverages these technologies and services, and importantly, this is an area where competitors such as Xerox and Canon are already active. HP is certainly well positioned to expand its focus more on capturing the profitable page share from the copier players through exploiting its experience in offering robust and scalable management tools as well as its strong global services heritage.
HP's Print 2.0 message will probably gain more traction in the world of digital content creation, where HP has already built some strong brand awareness for its inkjet printers and publishing platforms such as Snapfish. HP has recognised the impact that Web 2.0 technologies are having on digital content, and as the new generation of workers enter the enterprise, they will expect to consume information in a more interactive and compelling way than is offered by the static document. They are unlikely to have the attachment to ink and paper that older generations may have, and With Print 2.0, HP is first to acknowledge this transformation.
Other printer vendors also need to embrace these changes, and look to exploit the other revenue opportunities that will coexist with the printed document in today's dynamic content publishing world. Potentially, the print world should look at how visual interaction could be enhanced, and how documents could be re-purposed for use on multiple static and mobile platforms. In this way, users could have a one-stop shop for printing, whether this is to paper or to an alternative electronic format that fits with their immediate needs.
