For Position Only: HP and The Publisher
Hewlett-Packard has been in the news a lot lately, with the much bally-hooed merger with Compaq and its accompanying soap opera between CEO Carly Fiorina and Walter Hewlett getting at lot of ink, both real and virtual. But while most of the press has been focusing on whether the so-called “new HP” will succeed as the largest PC manufacturer in the world, the company has been steadfastly taking steps in completely other direction: printing. I say it’s a good thing that this $87 billion Goliath is strengthening one of its core technologies.
A Brief History of HP
Even with the Compaq merger, HP isn’t a particularly glamorous company. Sure, it’s got the cachet of being a Silicon Valley garage start-up that made it big, but electronic instrumentation? Only the geekiest of engineers can converse about capacity audio oscillators, the first HP product back in 1938, at cocktail parties.
But in the 1980s, HP helped fuel the desktop publishing revolution with the introduction of high-quality and highly reliable laser and inkjet printers that connect to personal computers. According to the company, the LaserJet is its most successful single product line ever (I know I wouldn’t trade my LaserJet 2100 TN for anything), and its line of DeskJet inkjet printers was not only a nail in the coffin of dot-matrix printers but also an usher for the age of affordable color printing from the desktop.
In the 1990s, however, HP became a follower instead of a leader in the desktop printer market. They were slow to release a color LaserJet, they preferred their own page description language to PostScript, and their printers became relatively expensive. The desktop printer market has become extremely competitive, and Epson and Canon, in particular, have gained ground in the inkjet market at the expense of HP. Choosing HP has come to mean paying a premium, and while it’s a favorite among Mac users (who, let’s face it, are used to paying higher prices for their systems), you can get more for your money from other printer manufacturers.
Like the Universe, Digital Imaging Expands
Enter the new millennium. Now not only is the printer market cutthroat, so is the desktop PC market, which “the new HP” seeks to dominate. Unfortunately, however, almost all of the company’s business units are unprofitable at the moment-except for its imaging products: printers, scanners, and cameras, which generate about $20 billion in annual revenue for HP. So it was music to my ears recently when HP announced a $1.2 billion investment in the imaging and printing market, including a planned roll-out of 50 new products between now and 2003.
HP is planning to capitalize on the seemingly ever-expanding digital imaging market. Carl Sagan would be proud. According to analysts, billions and billions of digital images will need to be printed by 2005 (15 billion, according to IDC), as digital cameras tighten their noose around the mainstream market.
I’m getting used to the fact that professional designers are no longer the driving force behind advances in publishing technologies. Adobe is going after the enterprise, HP is going after the consumer market. I’m of course saddened that you and I aren’t the twinkle in the eyes of these companies’ engineers, but developments at the consumer level do trickle up to us professionals (and developments for the enterprise do trickle down).
Every advance in color inkjet printing technology makes our job producing comps, scatter proofs, and contract proofs that much easier. While Aunt Alice might be jazzed that the Deskjet 5550 can print 4-x-6 inch borderless prints on photographic paper, I’m jazzed that it can print up to six colors at 4,800-dpi for under $150. The DeskJet 5550 is considered a midrange device; just wait ’till that quality makes it to the high-performance category.
Reaching for the High End
Before you get the wrong idea, I should clarify that HP isn’t focusing on consumers to the exclusion of design, publishing, and other print professionals. In March, the company quietly finalized its acquisition of Indigo N.V., an Israel-based manufacturer of specialty and commercial digital presses. The digital printing market has been maturing for a decade now, and given its successes with LaserJet technologies, HP would be a logical contender in the arena. However, the window of opportunity was fast closing, and had HP not acquired Indigo, it probably would have missed out on a shot at making money on this technology, because heretofore it hadn’t offered a single product in this market.
Now, by acquiring Indigo, which has both established digital presses and an established customer base, HP is in the fortuitous position of having bypassed the ugly infancy stage of new technology, when it is untested, unproven, and everyone loses money. Now HP will, hopefully, benefit from a primed marketplace and only have to refine and improve on what went before, instead of reinvent the wheel. Already, the company has rolled out a “centralized workflow management tool” called HP Production Flow, as well as a “Web-based integrated publishing tool” calledHP Custom Publishing. If these tools deliver the capabilities that their marketing-ese suggest, then HP is heading down the right track, having recognized the need for on-demand printers to automate their workflows and streamline production while increasing their offerings and keeping costs down.
Happy Printing
It’s so easy to let the news get you down these days-from terrorists to trans fat to yet another dive in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, it’s enough to make you cancel cable. Personally, I could care less if HP manages to keep its crown of being the largest PC manufacturer in the world. I’m just glad the company recognizes the importance of digital printing at all levels, because that’s bound to spell good news for print designers and publishers.
Read more by Anita Dennis.
This article was last modified on January 18, 2023
This article was first published on August 1, 2002
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