Discussion

By David Watson on Aug 22, 2007

The Eagle http://members.whattheythink.com/theeagle/theeagle125.cfm" rel="nofollow">in the Premium section makes the following observation: "And so, while the printers won a round in getting Adobe to rescind its scheme with FedEx Kinko's and to modify the Acrobat program that had favored that supplier, the potential remains for Adobe or some other supplier to slide in between the printers and their customers."

Although the HP Cloud is of different character then the Adobe FedEx Kinko's deal, it is a step towards "sliding in between the printers and their customers." Even if printers are free to sign up to be part of the Cloud. It is interesting that Kodak tried to launch something of this sort, but has backed away from it.

There is a broader question of whether the trend is for large brands to become the aggregators for print demand, be that Adobe, HP, Xerox, Microsoft, Apple, etc. There is also the emergence of aggregators like Vista Print. This has huge implications for the printing business that should be discussed more widely. This trend will be reinforced by print becoming more digital and less craft based.

The more that other marketing entities “slide in between the printers and their customers” the more print becomes a commodity and printers lose their market differentiation and the value of customer relations even if it results in some increase in volume. Despite Adobe's deal being dropped and Kodak's withdrawal it would seem that the trend will continue. It seems that one effect will be that those printers who service these aggregators of demand will have to become ever more productive in automating production to maintain margins.

By Michael Josefowic z on Aug 22, 2007

David makes some great points. From where I sit this is just the next phase of "you can't own the customer". Everything about the Internet is about power to the customer. We may not like it, but there it is. Frankly, I think this is mostly still irrelevent for printers working at the local scale. They still can offer the best combination of service, price and responsiveness. But for those printers working on the regional, national or international scale, this could be a big deal. Maybe for them, the most plausible reponse to this change in the environment is to really focus on being the best in class output engine. Let those who are able aggregate customers. Let those who can put marks on paper do it better, faster, cheaper and with greater responsiveness than anyone else. In this context, the stratgey of being a "solutions provider" may be less effective in the long run than being a state of the art manufacturer. It seemed to work pretty well for Intel making commodity chips.

By Noel Ward on Aug 31, 2007

Just a couple of random thoughts on this. One, HP's cloud seems like more of a convenience to people who travel a lot and want an easy way to print and share documents. Although HP is looking for service providers, it strikes me as having a whole lot more value if the output can be anywhere. For example someone working on a team that is developing a document--a proposal for instance-- could send the latest revision to the cloud and a traveling team leader (or a customer) could print it via their PDA or phone anywhere --such as in an airline club-- before jumping on a plane, and not need to deal with downloading the file. OK, there are connectivity, security and IP addresses to be dealt with for broadbased use, but those are hardly insurmountable issues. That kind of capability could be very convenient for a lot of people. Users could pay per "click," perhaps based on file size, number of pages or just a flat fee. But since HP is looking for printing locations there is also clear potential for print providers. Being part of a network that could send jobs to one's shop would not seem to be a bad thing. Sure, regular customers may not use this type of service, but it could be a good way to bring in some incremental business, and that probably doesn't hurt. There's nothing wrong with one-time sales to transient customers. What this --and the uproar about Adobe and FedEx Kinko's-- are showing, is that technology continues to move much faster than the average, or even above average, print provider. I think there remains a tendency among many print providers to see something new as a threat, rather than looking to see the positive side or how a new technological capability can be leveraged to make a business more successful. Or, if something is a threat, how best to meet it and maybe turn it to an advantage.