HP invited me to San Diego for the launch of their new high speed, low cost wide format color inkjet printer. The device, still to be named, will arrive midway through 2015. We were treated to a glimpse of a working version and a discussion as to where this product fits and the theoretical impact it will have in a market dominated by monochrome LED wide format printers.
The trip was incredibly short, lasting less time than either of my flights to/from the event. The first portion began with a little chest thumping with respect to HP wide format:
• >100+ patents filed yearly
• #1 technical design market
• Broadest portfolio
• 70+ industry awards
• 3M shipped printers
VP Juan Calderon says they need to understand their customers better and with this knowledge, they can produce services tailored specifically for their customers. The blending of the digital and physical world continues and the physical, “real” world has been enhanced by digital technology.
After Juan, Steve Nigro, VP of ink and graphics, took the stage. Steve discussed rethinking the industry. “We want to change the dynamics of the industry.” How will HP do this? They will do it through disruptive technology. He compared the wide format industry to laser vs. inkjet printing in the office and discussed HP’s inkjet office strategy. Four years ago, ink in the office was going to shrink as mono and color lasers came down in price. HP came out with a value proposition with the OfficeJet Pro X at twice the speed at half the cost.
The OfficeJet Pro X was a disruptive technology; low cost, page-wide technology started it. Ink innovation allowed for crazy fast inkjet speed at high quality. HP went from a 0% market share to 11% market-share in the office in less than a year (according to HP). That sounds high to me but you can’t argue with the fact that HP went from a shrinking market to nearly double-digit growth since they invented that product category.
HP is bringing the same approach to wide format. The wide-format industry is based on mono only LED technology with low running costs and high productivity. Today, you can buy wide-format inkjet but it’s not fast enough and too expensive.
Steve went on to discuss HP’s innovation since he began as an engineer with HP in San Diego some 30 years ago. In that time, their inkjet technology has gone from spraying 10,000 drops of ink per second to 1 billion, essentially doubling productivity of their inkjet system every 18 months. That’s amazing.
The new inkjet wide format devices are based on HP’s page-wide array technology that uses fixed print heads rather than the more traditional moving head technology. The main benefit is that this fixed print head allows for much greater speeds with more accuracy. We’re seeing this technology throughout HP’s product line from their 70+ PPM inkjet office printers to their massive web presses.
The benefits are obvious and unless competitors come up with comparable or similar products, HP should take the monochrome LED wide format market by storm when this product hits the streets in mid 2015. Pricing hasn’t been established but HP is confident that they will offer this product at a lower cost than LED printing and with the added benefit of color. Specs and speeds are not yet available but you can find the video I posted by looking up Andy Slawetsky on Youtube.
One question I have is with respect to customers that only want to print in monochrome. HP acknowledged that color opens the door to other issues, such as page coverage – mono pages generally have a fraction of the coverage as color pages and use much less ink. We can probably all agree that it’s better to have color and not need/want/use it, especially if there is no premium cost to it. However, I wonder if there is a segment of customers that would prefer to simply avoid color. I would think there might be an opportunity for HP to develop a sister monochrome product of the forthcoming wide array wide-format color printer.
The color vs. monochrome debate aside, this product will be a game changer. It’s fast, it’s supposed to be less expensive to own, it offers Click-to-Tweet: color printing at blazing speeds that can only be found with monochrome (at this point). There are a lot of dealers and resellers out there that have been selling KIP wide-format printers and dancing around the lack of color in their current portfolio. What’s not to love? Good job HP, I can’t wait for the launch.
