HP yesterday launched the HP Print Station, an HP-branded store that is being piloted countrywide.
The pilot stores are in three formats - a standalone store, a store within a store, and a store within a production store (production being an outsourced print/bind/copy facility that caters to corporate needs).
"The HP Print Stations will be operated by reseller partners that address a broad range of customer segments in SA and will in time be present in cities all over the country," the company says. HP is primarily targeting SMEs with the offering.
The launch forms part of HP's Print 2.0 strategy, which aims to keep printing relevant as content increasingly moves online, and printing is increasingly from Web-based sources.
"Print 2.0," says HP Middle East, Mediterranean and Africa (MEMA) VP and GM for HP's Imaging and Printing group (IPG) Pierre Mirlesse, "aims to make it easier to print from the Web. The Web is not designed for printing; we see a lot of concerns from users when they want to print a blog, for example, and end up printing 20 pages."
Print 2.0 also focuses on "delivering a next-generation digital printing platform that increases print speeds and lowers the cost of printing for high-volume commercial markets and extending HP's digital content creation and publishing platforms across all customer segments", the company said in a statement announcing the product launch.
As such, HP has invested in R&D for developing software tools, such as its Web Print Smart tool, which enables users to print only the content they want from a Web page. The company has also made a number of acquisitions in this space. It's acquisition of LogoWorks will allow it to provide a service that enables companies to have logos designed, and marketing collateral (like letterheads and business cards) printed, all via an online interface, it says.
It's acquisition of online photo service, Snapfish, "affords similar opportunities to create the Web-to-print experiences that are at the heart of Print 2.0. HP DreamColor makes it easy for graphic artists and photographers to match colour to prints or digital sources and deliver predictable colour in a wide variety of applications," the company says.
"People want to be able to manipulate data and images before they print them," says Mirlesse, and a lot of the company's recent acquisitions have provided it with tools/products with these capabilities."
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