Epson has introduced Epson Connect, solutions that enable users to connect wirelessly to the latest Epson printers via their mobile devices or Google Cloud.
The range of solutions includes e-mail printing, printing from mobile applications, and cloud-based printing. E-mail Print allows customers to print documents by sending an e-mail to an enabled Epson printer. The company's mobile application, iPrint, allows printing from mobile devices.
The application is available for Android and iOS operating systems, and although Epson says it is looking at other operating systems, nothing is planned at the moment.
Furthermore, while the iTunes store states that the iPrint app can print photos, Web pages, documents and PDFs, according to the Android store, the Android application only allows printing of photos and Web pages.
Epson has also announced a partnership with Google that allows Epson customers to print via the Google Cloud Print service. According to the company, this means Epson customers can print from the cloud using their smartphones or tablets with Gmail for mobile, Google Docs for mobile, and other supported applications.
Steven Ambrose, MD at Strategy Worx, says the app and the cloud solution are clever and fairly innovative.
However, he points out that they join a crowded market that already has a number of players. According to him, the Google Cloud solution is a logical and useful addition to the cloud-based applications already offered by Google. He argues that these will assist in growing Google's penetration of the cloud market.
Epson says these solutions will be compatible with Epson printers released from September 2011 onwards.
The iPrint app is available from the SA iTunes store here, and the Android version is available from the Android store here. Both apps are free.
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