able to scan, access, edit, share and print
documents directly from their devices,”
he said.
“With the UTAX Mobile Print App, it
is really quick and easy to display and
present documents and pictures saved
on a mobile device in the printed form.
This increases the usefulness and usage
of mobile devices and makes working life
more productive.”
Custom apps
Although mobile printing has not taken
off to the extent that many thought it
would (see box on page 21), take-up of
dedicated printing apps as an alternative
to AirPrint and Google Cloud Print is
growing nonetheless.
A good example is iPrint & Scan from
Brother. “In 2013 about 68 million pages
worldwide were printed using our app. In
2014 that went up to 120 million pages,
and we are expecting it this year to
double again. The take-up of the app has
been phenomenal,” explained Johnson.
Ricoh’s Ulman says these vendor-
developed apps are often created to
overcome the limitations of generic
solutions like AirPrint.
“All of our machines that areWiFi and
network-enabled come with Ricoh Smart
Print & Scan app functionality. This is our
equivalent of AirPrint and in some ways
it is superior to AirPrint because it works
as a driver. Not only does it allow you to
print from screen; you can also open a
document in the app and then zoom in,
zoom out, select colour or mono and the
number of prints,” she said.
Pakulski added: “You can even use the
app to surf the web and print web pages,
so it’s a powerful driver and tool that
can be used on iPhone, iPad and Android
devices. The major feature for me is that
the printer does not have to be aWiFi
model. As long as it is a Ricoh network
device and your iPad or iPhone are on
the same network, you can still print
wirelessly from those devices.”
Canon, too, has a mobile printing
app, using cloud services to improve the
printing of Microsoft Office attachments.
Canon European marketing manager
Anil Jagpal said: “If you have an AirPrint
printer and want to print an email that
should be easy. However, if you want to
print a Powerpoint file attached to the
email, Airprint will print it, but because
of the way iOS renders MS Office files,
the layout will be corrupted.With our
app, a built-in feature connects to our
cloud service which renders the image
into something printable, sends it back
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and prints it. So you can print office files
without needing a Microsoft app for iOS.
The app is free and the service is free.”
Security first
Ulman says that one of the reasons
people have been slow to adopt cloud
printing is that they are worried about
security and that to alleviate their
concerns Ricoh has been building its own
cloud service.
“A recent study conducted by
Samsung’s mobile division showed that
the first hesitation is security. Ricoh has
its own cloud service; we don’t buy it
from anyone; it’s secured by us.We are
working on a cloud service for printing
which will be available for more high-
end business machines but not yet the
consumer models,” she said.
“It’s printing on the go. If you have
some kind of Google service, you can
print to a device in the office and go and
pick the print up. At the moment, with
the app we have, you need to be linked
to the device by the same network.
It’s very secure because you are on the
same network and the network is secure.
That’s why people trust our technology.
Nobody is afraid of printing confidential
documents that way. But when you are on
the go, you think ‘where does it go? I am
sending it somewhere and I am not going
to be picking it up ‘til the next day?”
MOPRIA
Despite these advances the printer
industry still has some way to go before
mobile printing becomes second nature.
This, Anil Jagpal points out, is what the
Mobile Printing Alliance (MOPRIA) has
been set up to address.
“Initiatives like MOPRIA, which Canon
is a founding member of, wants to make
it as easy as possible for people to print
from their mobile device. It’s still a
journey, but the founding members – HP,
Canon, Xerox, Samsung – have developed
a plug-in that can be installed on Android
devices. This is available on the PlayStore
now. The next step is for this plug-in to
be installed as part of the OS when you
buy an Android device, so it’s not even
something that you have to download,”
he said.
“With MOPRIA-compatible devices
and more and more apps becoming
MOPRIA-compatible, the experience
will be as seamless as when you buy an
iPad and an AirPrint-compatible printer
and take both things out of the box and
print. You find Print on the menu on
your tablet/phone and it connects to the
printer and prints. It’s trying to get the
same seamless experience as AirPrint.
Now you have to download the plug-in
to install but in the future even that step
should be removed.”
Fewer interventions
The combination of greater ease of
use and reliability, plus other factors,
such as the availability of high capacity
cartridges, collectively reduce the need
for so many user interventions, whilst
also easing device management.
Dell’s Dave McNally said: “Printers
have become easier to use, manage and
own. Improvements in usability, setup
and reliability mean fewer interventions
are required from the user side. Higher
capacity cartridges and lifetime fuser
units mean staff spend less time
changing toner. Dell OpenManage Printer
Manager (OMPM), for example, will
proactively monitor your devices and
inform your helpdesk operator of an
issue on the printer before the end user
is even aware of it.”
Paul Young says this is also a
consequence of clever product design.
“What’s different about UTAX devices,”
he said, “is that they are built as modular
systems so it’s really simple to replace
parts, such as developer units, drums
and transfer belts, which means less
downtime for each machine. Another
benefit of UTAX devices is that all
replacement parts on a machine have
the same long lifespan. That means
servicing can be done in one hit.”
He added: “It’s worth pointing out
here that by utilising a managed print
services (MPS) contract organisations
Dave McNally,
Dell
...continued
continued...
The printer
industry still
has some
way to go
before mobile
printing
becomes
second nature
