BERLIN, Lexmark's Chairman and CEO, Paul Curlander, predicted to a group of leading journalists today that printing will remain an ever-evolving technological industry, in part because of the staggering growth of the Internet. Online technology will "affect every core business process and ultimately, the home," Curlander stated. As part of the information accessibility explosion, home printing is expected to grow accordingly. "With the evolution of the Internet and resulting proliferation of data at our fingertips, paper consumption in the home and office will possibly increase from three to eight trillion pages by 2010," Curlander forecasted. A major factor in home printing is the burgeoning digital photo industry. Home photo printing is expected to grow from 2.5 billion photos printed last year to more than 15 billion by 2004. According to Curlander the "key enabler" for this rapid growth will be "a printer that makes it easy and convenient to print photos at home." The CEO's vision was presented at the Lexmark "20/20: Vision on Print" conference in Berlin. The annual global gathering consists of top industry technologists, futurists, authors and scientists who share their expert opinions and insights on innovative technology with an audience of leading journalists. The role of printing remains strong as technologies both emerge and converge in the era of the expanding PC market. Despite the technology expertise of the audience, Curlander emphasized that the human element is a critical driver of printing trends. He characterized printing as the "ultimate expression of our thoughts." Lexmark is already focusing its attention on what it believes will be the dominant print technologies of the future. Curlander predicted that the inkjet industry is "on the verge of a technological breakthrough that will drive an acceleration of color devices into the office." Curlander's thoughts on the dominant delivery technologies of the future were shared at today's morning keynote with more than 200 business, consumer, financial and technology writers and editors from around the globe. He discussed Lexmark's strategy to drive and support distributed printing environments. Curlander also commented on the company's efforts, now and in the future, to provide solutions and streamline processes in the office and home environments that facilitate complete electronic workflow. Lexmark also used the conference to discuss future technology designed to capitalize on the rapid proliferation of wireless and mobile computing, Internet appliances, digital photo technology, broadband connectivity and the networked home of the future.