| At its Enterprise Imaging and Printing Press and Analysts Conference held October 3 in San Francisco, CA, Hewlett-Packard laid out detailed plans for a broad-scale attack on the enterprise printing market. Several new products were announced during the event, many of which could have a major impact on the competitive landscape. All told, HP has unveiled 23 new printer and MFP models in 8 different product families. The list is formidable not just because of the number of models, but because of the breadth and depth of the market that HP has covered. The list of new products includes 14 different multifunctional models that range from low-end color laser-based devices aimed at small Workgroups to high-end, A3-size MFPs designed for departmental office applications. In fact, HP claims that this latest introduction includes the “largest multifunction printer rollout in company history.” In short, HP is clearly gearing up for a full-scale attack on the copier market.
HP also used the event to introduce a new ink-based imaging technology called Edgeline which will be leveraged across multiple products targeted at a variety of environments including retail photo printing, high-volume office printing, and industrial printing applications. For some time, InfoTrends has forecasted the wide deployment of inkjet-based technology to address a broad range of printing requirements. This technology is currently widely deployed at the low end of the market, in specialty markets such as wide format, and among high speed, high-priced page printers such as the Kodak Versamark. InfoTrends believes that HP’s Edgeline announcement will accelerate the promise of inkjet for wide deployment in the higher end of the Workgroup environment. To put it simply, this is a big deal.
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