Hewlett-Packard (HP) on Thursday launched a host of imaging and printing products and solutions, aimed at addressing the requirements of varied customers such as home users and small and medium enterprises.
The launch was made at the company's annual global imaging and printing conference here in the presence of analysts and select media persons from the Asia-Pacific region.
[Of the products launched, five are printers while one is a scanner.]
Among the new printers was HP Top Shot Laser Jet Pro M275, which would capture images of 3-D objects and scan documents. The other printers included Pro 100 color MFP M175nw, Enterprise 600 series and Enterprise 500 color M551 series, all of which belonged to the laser jet printer category. The Officejet Pro 8600 Plus e-All-in-One printer and Officejet Pro 8100 e-Printer fell under the category of ink jet. The Scanjet Enterprise 8500 fn1 Document Capture Workstation was the new scanner.
The inauguration of many applications and content services to be used in mobile phones was another feature of the day's event. The applications were for smartphones with the operating systems of Android, iOS and Symbian.
Giving an account of his company's new products, collaborations, applications and solutions in imaging and printing, Vyomesh I. Joshi, Executive Vice-President of the Imaging and Printing Group (IPG) of the HP, [which sponsored the trip of media persons to Shanghai], told the audience that innovation was at the core of its $26-billion imaging and printing business. In Asia Pacific and Japan (APJ), the company had been witnessing the double digit revenue growth.
Explaining how its web-connected printers had captured the attention of customers across the world, Mr Joshi said so far, 10 million such printers were sold. This would get doubled by the end of this year. By 2012 end, 50 million web-connected devices would be sold, he added.
Talking of the growing need for the applications meant for smartphones, Stephen Nigro, senior vice president, Inkjet Web Solutions, HP's IPG, said the Asia-Pacific region accounted for two billion mobile phone users, representing 50 per cent of the world's total user strength. The launch of the Top Shot model in India would be in the early part of next year.
On his group's focus on education, Mr Joshi said HP, as part of its efforts to promote the qualities of writing and reading among school students in India, had tied up with Katha, an non-governmental organisation and writer-lyricist, Prasoon Joshi.
As part of the programme, a series of workshops would be held to leverage imaging and printing technologies of the company which would help the students in their learning process. One such workshop was held at Bangalore last month and six more cities would be covered.
