An ebullient Alon Bar-Shany, HP indigo vice president put some figures on the claim, stating that the number of pages printed digitally is forecast to grow tenfold by 2020 up to 100 billion a year from its present 10 billion level. Bar-Shany says this is reflecting the trend of the last ten years where digitally printed pages rose tenfold from one billion to 10 billion.
HP says that could computing will become part of print in the years to come, with John Solomon, senior vice president Imaging and Printing Group highlighting cloud, digital transformation and the environment as the three mega trends that were shaping HP strategy. Cloud computing – effectively outsourced IT – could well suit printers struggling to bring IT skills into their businesses.
Australian and New Zealand digital printers were among the guests at Dscoop, held in the Korean capital Seoul to coincide with the local print show Kipes. David Mimmet, managing director of digital pioneer Group Momentum was elected to the first Asia Pacific Dscoop steering committee, along with peers from Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia, China, Malaysia and the USA.
Globally Dscoop has some 1800 members, it began in the US five years ago, and claims this year’s first Asia Pacific event is already the biggest graphic arts user group in the entire region.
HP itself is aiming to become the biggest supplier in print, with Benny Landa saying that would take three years, although Bar-Shany was more circumspect when it came to a timeline.
The Asia Pacific region is now as large as North America for HP, reflecting the high uptake of its presses across the region. Australia is one of the leading countries, with Hp seeing 40 per cent year on year growth, indicating that Aussie printers are embracing digital to a large degree.
HP claims a 74 per cent market share in high end colour, with Xeikon, Kodak NexPress and Xerox taking the bulk of the rest. HP says market share has remained steady at this level for the past five years.
The conference heard from a succession of Indigo users on the different applications they were developing.
Landa’s address departed from his norm and was deeply personal, revealing his difficult but loving childhood as his parents fled the Nazis in Poland, suffered in Russia, and eventually ended up living the frozen wastelands of northern Canada.
He waxed lyrical about Israel, for which he clearly has deep affection and pride. He also revealed that it was license money from patents that financed Indigo during the 16 years from its inception in 1977 to the launch of the Indigo Eprint 1000 at Ipex in 1993.
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