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HP Outlines Progress, Key Strategies at ‘Power of Print’ Day

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HP Inc. Power of Print 2018

Last week, HP Inc. commemorated its three-week anniversary as an independent company devoted to printing and PCs, with executives from HP Inc.’s Printing Solutions group sharing the company’s progress at its Palo Alto headquarters, and laying out HP Inc.’s strategy for the future.

HP Inc.’s Enrique Lores, president of HP Inc.’s Imaging and Printing group, kicked off the event. Lores outlined HP Inc.s core growth strategies, which are:

  • “Reignite” HP’s home printing segment with new models such as Tango, billed as the world’s first smart printer and controlled by voice or phone (see here).
  • Grow profitable office print/copy share.
  • Disrupt the contractual copier business
  • Continue to grow as well as expand in the graphics-printing industry
  • Lead in 3D printing for industry and manufacturing.

Improved Financials

Lores also noted that HP continues to report upbeat financial results. For its fiscal-year 2018, year-over-year, revenue is up 12 percent; operating profit is up 6 percent; unit sales are up 13 percent; and supplies’ sales are up 7 percent. In contrast, three years ago, for fiscal-year 2015, year-over-year, revenue was down 9 percent; operating profit was down 10 percent; unit sales were down 8 percent; and supplies’ sales were down 4 percent.

Lores also noted HP Inc.’s key progress in these areas:

  • In the home-printing segment, the adoption rate for HP’s Instant Ink automatic ink-cartridge fulfillment program was up 20 percent in fiscal-year-2018, with a 30-percent year-over-year growth in enrollees in Instant Ink in fiscal-year 2018.
  • In the office segment, A3 copier/MFP share was 9 percent and up 2 points year-over-year.
  • In the graphics-printer segment, HP page growth was up 10 percent year-over-year.

Printing-as-a-Service

Lores explained that HP’s printing-as-a-service consists of: home subscriptions for printer supplies; contractual service in the office; and a click-charge model in the graphics-printer segment, with HP overall expecting printing-as-a-service to drive growth in fiscal-year 2019 and beyond.

HP Inc. Office Printing Solutions

Tuan Tran, global head and general manager of HP Inc. Office-Printing Solutions, reported that HP has grown its A4 office market share 1 percent to reach 47-percent market share, and grown its A3 office market share 2 percent to reach 9-percent market share. HP has grown its managed print services (MPS) share to 10 percent, becoming the number-three MPS leader. HP also recently expanded its MPS reach with its recent acquisition of U.K.-based Apogee.

“That's the $55 billion market opportunity for us to go after—to go after aggressively with technology and differentiation.” 

According to Tran (above), “The A3 market is critical to bringing print back to growth. That’s the $55 billion market opportunity for us to go after—to go after aggressively with technology and differentiation.”

Tran noted that trends affecting the office segment are: employees working from more than one location and the need for mobile solutions; increasing importance of security; entrance of “digital-native” millennials into the workforce; MPS and printing-as-a-service;  eco-friendliness and sustainability; and the increasing need for digitization of paper processes.

Among the pain points Tran identified for the typical copier/MFP in the office have been: out-of-the way, remote copier/MFPs; hard-to-connect-to-devices; disconnected workflows; security fears; and frequent downtime.

HP’s solutions for the challenges include HP Roam and JetAdvantage Apps for mobile printing and workflows, respectively; protect, detect, and recover security (including Microsoft SCCM Integration MacAfee SIEM Integration); and intelligent devices that “never go down” with HP Smart Device Services, the last of which provides device monitoring and remote service delivery, fixing machines before they fail.  For dealers, the advantages of Smart Device Services are said to include: diagnosis before dispatching service personnel; remote fixing; and other benefits, which can result in an up to 11-percent reduction in service labor costs.

Page-Wide and LaserJet for the Office

HP’s Tran explained that HP offers customers two distinct choices based on their needs:

HP’s third-generation color-inkjet PageWide models, which feature:

  • HP’s lowest color cost at fast print speeds: up to 80 ppm with A3 models and up to 75 ppm with A4 models.
  • Most environmentally friendly: up to 73-percent less energy and 95-percent less supplies and packaging waste.
  • Best print quality on specialty media.
  • Approximately  60,000 ink nozzles delivering pigmented inks.

HP LaserJet toner-based models are said to feature:

  • Best image quality on any paper.
  • Highest durability.
  • Best for high-density color output.

HP Roam for Business

HP also highlighted its HP Roam for Business mobile-printing solution, which features:

  • Submit print jobs anytime, anywhere, from any device.
  • Release for printing at any Roam-enabled device at the office, guest printer, or public print locations.
  • Collect print jobs without requiring  a specific printer driver or be on the same network
  • Print -job encryption: print jobs are encrypted from submission to authorized user release.

Graphics-Printing Segment

In graphics printing, HP sees substantial opportunity in personalized output, such as labels personalized with customer names or an event name. The firm notes that label-printing continues to grow strongly, noting, for instance, that grocery stores carry more than 40,000 items today than in the 1990s, fueling the need for fast, efficient label printing.

In the graphics-printing segment, HP’s strategy is to continue to shift workflow to its digital-printing solutions, and provide solutions for customization and the ability for print providers to speed their time to market, as well as  to service both large and small (micro) customers with solutions such as its Print OS and HP Piazza solutions.

In this segment, the company says it will continue to seek to grow in its current markets – design and technical printing; signage and decoration; and general and commercial publishing – as well as expand into these new markets: label printing, package printing, and textile printing.

3D-Printing Segment

HP outlined its progress  in the 3D-printing industrial and manufacturing segment:

  • HP is number-one in commercial-plastics 3D printing, according to market-research firm CONTEXT.
  • HP’s 3D printers are 2018’s most-used industrial 3D printer, according to 3D Hubs Digital Manufacturing Trends Report.

HP 3D printers are currently producing production parts for the transportation, industrial, medical, and consumer markets. HP has also launched both color 3D printers and 3D metal printers.

“There are triggers that are key to unlocking this huge opportunity in 3D, and HP is working to accelerate all of them.” 

According to Tim Weber (above), who is Head of 3D Materials and Advanced Applications at HP, “There are triggers that are key to unlocking this huge opportunity in 3D, and HP is working to accelerate all of them.”

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