HP was holding its pre-Drupa press conference at the time of typing, with headline news including the much-anticipated launch of a new B2-format Indigo (this time around it seems rather more likely this product will come to market than with Indigo's previous B2 foray in 2000-2004).

Exciting stuff for HP's Indigo operation. Among the other announcements came news of progress in HP's high-speed inkjet wing. Back at Drupa 2008 HP rocked up with a fully-functioning inkjet web press, which must have scared the pants off a host of competitors in the high-volume inkjet space, most notably Kodak.

Today HP parked its tanks even further up Kodak's lawn by announcing a new inkjet imprinting system for offset presses, too.

We've also learned that HP now has 60 of its high-speed inkjet presses installed, with lots of customers - such as Communisis and CPI - opting for multi-unit installations. Impressive.

Kodak claims "hundreds" of installs now for its Prosper inkjet heads, but that's the heads as opposed to entire Stream presses, so not readily comparable.

Oc? is also busy in this space, too, but you might be surprised to learn that it's Screen who claims market leadership in high-speed inkjet, with some 400 Truepress Jet520s installed since this system was launched in 2006. They're not all under its own brand, due to Screen's OEM deal with Ricoh/Infoprint.

All of this means that come Drupa in 50 day's time there'll be no shortage of high-speed inkjet action.

And it's also worth checking out developments at clever integrators such as Matti Technology. They usually have some clever stuff up their Swiss sleeves.