Although the products are designed for consumer and office printing applications, the firm has plans to use the Scalable Printing Technology for all its print markets including commercial and industrial print in the future.

"Today marks a milestone in HP's 21-year printing history," said Imaging & Printing Group executive vice president Vyomesh Joshi. "This technology is the next step in our business transformation  the master key that unlocks new market opportunities."

Five years and 800m ($1.4bn) have been invested in R&D for the new technology. The breakthrough is in the design of the print head and the way it is manufactured. These developments promise to cut the costs of development and manufacturing while boosting speed and image quality. Speed and quality can easily be enhanced, according to the firm, by increasing the width of the print head and by adding additional nozzles in a given space.

The first products to use the new technology are a photo printer and an all-in- one for consumers and the Officejet Pro K550, a business printer that will compete with colour laser printers on speed and running costs.

"Office imaging is just the start, watch this space," said Emmanuel Klotz, marketing director, HP Imaging and Printing Group EMEA.
Despite having said the technology would be scaled up for commercial print applications it is not seen as a successor to the Indigo technology, at least not in the immediate future. Klotz said of its use in commercial and industrial markets: "that's the horizon".

Story by Barney Cox