Having worked for HP and a number of companies in the Printing/Imaging business, I’m struck by how companies believe their businesses will grow without having to innovate. For instance, in this video of HP’s Vyomesh Joshi as interviewed by John Battelle, he points out that desktop PC to printer connect rates had historically been around 70%, while laptop to printer connect rates are closer to 30%. Essentially, this would mean that people would have to start printing twice the pages/photos than previously. Where are the innovations that will help HP double it’s business?
Sure, they do some things to facilitate direct printing by those who likely hadn’t thought of it. Like with the HP In-House Marketing effort, Marketing Impressions, essentially a resource to try to get SMBs to print more in-house. This is now more correctly-geared toward micro-businesses, however, how many of those folks really want to buy a printer in order to spend more of their harried hours printing themselves? Micro-business is all about keeping overhead down, while finding some time to have a life.
I’m also very curious about how HP intends to be in the web-to-print business for multi-page documents (books, ebooks, printing multiple blog postings, etc.)–without a decent finishing solution. Sure, some of the high-end HP machines, like the HP LaserJet 9500, offer an add-on booklet-maker, but who wants to spend $6,800 on a printer in order to have the priviledge to pay another $2,400 for the finisher?
Until HP gets some finishing solutions for their less expensive printers (but, with equally impressive output)$8,200 buys alot of finished documents at Kinko’s. Better yet, especially if you already have a printer, consider doing your own finishing, such as with MyBinding.com. You can probably set up a virtual printshop for you (and family/friends) for less than 1/3rd the cost that HP would like.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: Binding, Document Finishing, eBooks, HP, Kinko's
