Distributed printing is the future, but the dominant printing technology has yet to be invented, says Dr Paul Curlander, chairman and CEO of Lexmark International.
In his keynote address at Lexmark`s "2020 Vision on Print" conference in Berlin this morning, Curlander outlined Lexmark`s 20-year vision for the printing market and technologies.
He said $80 billion a year is spent on printers, copiers and fax machines, making this market bigger than the enterprise storage, server, or notebook PC markets.
But given the growing Internet access, what happens to printing? "More Internet access means more printing," he explained.
He said three trillion pages were printed at homes and offices last year, which is 5% of the total number of 60 trillion pages printed worldwide.
He predicted that this figure would grow to 10% to 15% to reach eight trillion by 2010. However, Lexmark believes that due to electronic document distribution, overall paper usage is coming down and will be back at the 1995 level in 2010.
Lexmark refers to this as the "waterfall effect" - the move from the "print and distribute" paradigm of the mass publication and offset printing, to the "distribute and print" scenario of the Internet and intranet environment.
Paperless office?
"We believe the future of printing is distributed printing," explained Curlander. "Today there`s no doubt that the office is overflowing with paper, but we believe there`s opportunity to streamline and consolidate office equipment.
"Offices of the future will facilitate complete electronic workflow, and printing will happen only when and where you need it, on demand, closer to the ultimate user."
In the office of the future, users won`t even have to buy the devices, said Curlander. They`ll work with e-documents and e-forms, distribute via e-workflow and e-distribution, and print on demand and pay on demand.
He said that in order for this to happen, three things need to evolve: the move from paper to electronic transfer of documents, the penetration of colour output, and printing from wireless devices.
In terms of the technology that will prevail in wireless printing, Lexmark bets on Bluetooth. "We think it`s going to be Bluetooth technology, but all players need to not only embrace but implement Bluetooth. We`ll see that happening in the next two to three years."
Futuristic vision
When it comes to the futuristic printing technologies, it`s harder to make predictions.
"The dominant printing technology has yet to be invented," said Curlander.
But the most likely contenders are down to a shortlist of three: Powderjet, e-presentation technology and multimedia print.
Curlander defined Powderjet as "liquid laser minus the liquid, plus reusability". He predicted that we`ll see powder-based products well before 2020.
E-presentation technology would involve the convergence of display and print technologies and a shift from paper to new media, "wireless, thin, light and flexible as paper".
"The challenge is to get the cost of such media down to the cost of paper."
The third futuristic technology, multimedia print, would see the convergence of image, sound and video into a single multimedia output. "You can envision this as paper output with electronic media stored within it."
While Curlander said he didn`t know which of the three technologies would ultimately prevail, for the foreseeable future it`s liquid laser, which he referred to as "breakthrough".
"Liquid laser is the next generation of current inkjet technology," he explained. "It is competitive to laser in speed and quality, but the cost per page needs to be comparable to laser. We think this will happen."
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