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What about “old school” - paper? Or what about printing companies who are paper-oriented?

There is a big printing market but is there any kind of evolution in printing technology? This situation looks like battle between fax and email. We all know who won.

There are some integration between these two worlds: printing is becoming wireless, printing quality is increasing, printing goes mobile, etc.

Let’s present couple of elements of printing evolution:

1. Hewlett-Packard ePrint

Application which was presented in old 2011, helped people to get more control and flexibility over printing. This application allowed users to use any mobile device (with installed ePrint and device enable to send mails), send email to HP LaserJet printers directly. Thanks to ePrint application user could define color, orientation and size of print material.

2. LG Pocket Photo

In November of 2012 LG presented mobile printer which allows users to print photos from your smartphones. It is wireless communication (thanks to Bluetooth NFC (Near Field Communication)) of mobile phone and printer. Smartphone should have Android OS to be able to install the application. Printer had a weight of 215g (!?!) and size of 72 x 120 x 24 mm (size of mobile phone!) which will print photos 2×3 inches (5.1×7.6 cm).

3. Samsung Galaxy S4 and Samsung printers

Samsung manage to connect with WiFi communication of Galaxy S4 and almost every Samsung’s printer. Using NFC (Near Field Communication) on Samsung’s smartphone and inside Samsung printers users can connect automatically (if it’s enabled), and if they are close enough to each other. If you know that Galaxy models have camera of 8MP (Galaxy S4 has 14MP camera), try to guess the quality of these printed images. Maybe printing services in classic approach is in danger because of a new approach, but you can imagine what Samsung will do next.

4. Polaroid is back - Z2300

It’s digital camera, with resolution of 10 MP, and 3inch display - and can print instant images! Ok, in this case “instant print” is less than a minute and photos are 2 x 3 inches. Polaroid is good proof that printing is always trendy, and people like to share real images.

Conclusion

Guess what could happen in the next couple of years? Maybe we will be able to print directly from smartphones, or we will have “public printers” (like public phones), and it will be possible to print on the street.

Printing needs are not like before, but you can see how high technology is affecting printing and printers, using applications and smartphones.

If print industry will ignore new wave of mobile technology (smartphones and tablets) and free Google service, they will lose even more target audience. The future of printing is in integration of these worlds: mobile + web + printing.

Citations:

Alessandro Sarto is blogger, jogger and optimist who loves photography, humor and hi-tech gadgets. Works as project manager of CRM startup, and very familiar with process of implementing ideas into reality.

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  • http://BigPictureThinking.com/ Jann Alexander

    Still a big fan of printing, using a fine art inkjet printer on the many media choices out there. Nothing like the thrill of tweaking and printing and tweaking some more until you have the print you envisioned. Costs of ink and paper being what they are, more and more creatives find themselves limited in what they can afford to print. Hopefully some of the newer technologies you’re describing will bring costs down, too. Thanks for the tech updates. #MustPrint!