Recognising that the balance of power between the way people consume, digest and print content is shifting from offline to online, HP has reaffirmed its commitment to providing innovative technologies, such as digital printing techniques, that help address users' needs in this new world.
So says Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of HP's imaging and printing group, speaking at the start of the company's 10th annual HP Lab University event in Lisbon this morning.
The move to digital is central to HP's vision of helping customers enjoy the combined worlds of print and the web as it believes this will help improve speed and cost and enable a greater volume of pages to be printed.
"There are 49 trillion pages printed every year and only nine per cent are digital. We're talking about analogue to digital conversion," Joshi told delegates via a video played during the opening keynote of the event.
This morning's comments build on an announcement made last month by Joshi, in which he ushered in the dawn of 'Print 2.0.'
"Today, we're introducing a new era in printing. We're redefining what it means to print and further accelerating the transformation from analog to digital printed pages. In today's world of 'mashed media' - words, pictures, video, songs - the question becomes 'How will people publish this content?' Print 2.0 is the answer. This vision centres on empowering our customers to create and consume their content, their way," he said at the time.
Shortly after Joshi's video-relayed vision of a more digital future, his comments were echoed by Stephen Nigro, senior vice president and general manager of the graphics and imaging business, who suggested that the company expects the volume of digital print output to grow to 53 trillion pages by 2010, a surge of 10 per cent on current figures.
As both businesses and consumers become more embroiled in social networking, blogging and community-driven content, users crave simple tools that will enable them to print whenever, wherever, much in the way they are used to working anywhere and at anytime, according to Joshi.
"Distribution is changing with the internet. There are one billion people connected and content distribution has been transformed. Consumers, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), graphics companies and enterprise customers are creating user-created content at a rapid rate, with 150,000 blogs created every day," he said.
"Customers are consuming broad content so we need to build a very simple user interfaces for each segment so that they can mash up professional content. When they can do that they will want to print anywhere and at anytime."
Joshi added: "For example, small and medium-sized companies want to look like bigger companies and we absolutely believe that the internet will be a key enabler to making this happen."
The creation of simple user interfaces coupled with the power of the web will ultimately drive more pages towards a digital destiny and, as Joshi hopes, more in the direction of HP.
"This event is very important to us. Your feedback on the technical innovation HP is doing is crucial for us and our business strategy," he told the audience of more than 300 analysts and journalists.
"I'm very sure you'll hear more about these types of technologies throughout this event."
