Use a Tablet, Save a Tree

February 16, 2011 at 3:33 am PT

Ironic, isn’t it, that Hewlett-Packard touts wireless printing as one of the TouchPad’s big selling points, when the tablet form-factor to some extent obviates the need to print.

By providing us with an easy, intuitive way of viewing and editing documents, tablets are reducing printing demand in the consumer and enterprise markets. And by increasing demand for e-books and digital magazines and newspapers, they’re doing the same thing in the commercial printing market as well. In fact, Morgan Stanley expects a decline of up to two percent in printer supplies revenue in 2011 and a two percent to five percent decline in 2012.

“CIOs in the enterprise space already expect to cut spending on printer supplies in 2011,” the research outfit said in a vast new report on the tablet market. “As the installed base of tablets–a digital document viewer that reduces the need to print both standard black and white documents and expensive color presentations–grows, we expect printed page volumes to shrink. What?’s more, 90% of iPad users already believe they would print less with access to work documents on their tablets.”

Given that, it’s no wonder HP is putting so much effort into the TouchPad. If tablets are reducing printing demand across all market strata, its printing business is clearly going to take a hit. What better way to ease that blow than to sell a tablet of its own?

Tagged with: Apple, commercial, consumer, decline, demand, documents, e-books, editing, hardware, Hewlett-Packard, HP, innovation, iPad, John Paczkowski, magazines, Morgan Stanley, newspapers, printer, printing, report, supplies, tablet, tablet market, tablets, TouchPad, viewing, WebOS, wireless

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$350AShareMakesMeGrin>8-D

HP must hate hearing this despite the fact that they’re putting out their own tablets. It should only cut into their printer business a bit at this point, but I doubt if any businesses will give up printing reports completely.

I rarely use my printer at home because I don’t feel like buying color ink since it’s rather expensive but occasionally I have to print out documents to give to other people so I can’t dump my printer completely. Originally, I never saw the tablet as being a replacement for printing, but it’s good that the tablet can be used somewhat in place of a printer and is therefore that much more useful.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Tony-Mills/1099638671 Tony Mills

Ah, the paperless office. Desktops were suppose to be the end of the printer, instead, we now print a new copy if there was only one mistake corrected in a document. Shift the format, change the font, etc.
“Can you get me a hard copy?” How many times have you heard that?
Tablets will be HP’s way of getting you to print more copies.
http://www.facebook.com/bobsentell Bob Sentell

I agree. HP appears to be focusing its tablet more on enterprise customers (a more lucrative group, honestly). While I’m sure the average iPad user probably never uses the printer (not much to print when you don’t have access to the full internet), the TouchPad will make it even easier for your manager to ask you to change something and print it.
Anonymous

This one is really one of the best title. And I really totally agree with you that tables are really playing one of the great role in reducing printing demand and it really helpful for increasing demand for e books and digital documents.

envelope printing