HP App Store entry allows wireless photo printing for iPhone and Touch
The App Store has its first application from Hewlett Packard, just in time for Christmas. The new application lets users wirelessly print photos from the iPhone and iPod Touch.
The app is called iPrint Photo and is the first that allows users of the iPhone and iPod Touch to print photos without moving them first to a laptop or desktop workstation. The new program connects the user’s Apple device directly to most HP inkjet printers, as long as they are part of a local wireless network, and prints 4 x 6 photos taken with the Apple portable devices.
HP plans to officially introduce the new application at MacWorld Expo in January and at the 2009 Consumer Electronics Show. The iPrint Photo app is compatible with Apple’s Bonjour technology and uses the Apple Multi-Touch interface to make the photo printing procedure as simple as possible for the user. The app tightly binds the iPhone / Touch to the user’s HP printers, according to a Newsfactor story.
Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst at the Enderle Group, said of the application, “There’s a major shift happening in the mobile domain today. Annual camera phone device shipments are exploding on a worldwide basis, and mobile photo printing is quickly growing. Until now, customers had no easy way to print the special moments captured on their iPhone or stored on their iPod touch.”
The Hewlett Packard application fills what has been a significant gap in the marketplace. A user that had captured images with the iPhone or iPod Touch had few choices if they wanted a hard copy of a photo. They had to first move the image to their computer, and send it from there to a printer. The iPrint Photo app for the Iphone and Touch make it possible to eliminate the middleman. Think of Christmas Eve and morning with a few Apple devices and this new HP application. Everyone in the family could take gift opening photos and print them immediately to pass around, providing absolute instant gratification on the photo front.
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March 26th, 2009
Very cool post. I’ll be sure to bookmark your blog.