HP Plans Web-Connected Printers Without PCs

Hewlett-Packard Co is preparing a broad push to make it easier to print images and information from the Internet, building an iPhone-style apps market in the process, the head of the company's imaging group said on Wednesday. HP late last year introduced its first Web-connected home printer, which can download applications so that a user could more easily download and print out, for example, a daily crossword puzzle or children's colouring page in one step.

"The usage of that printer is going up by double digits," Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of the Imaging and Printing Group, told the Reuters Global Technology Summit in San Francisco. Joshi said a new Web printing initiative was in the works but declined to say when or what it would be. However, he said the first Web-connected printer would be followed by more. "We have launched it, we have learned, and now we will lead," he said. HP has planned for years to make it easier to print from the Web, but Joshi said it was difficult to keep up with the pace of Internet growth. "The Web is where the content creation is happening, the content explosion is happening and we want to capture that content," he said. However, he added, "It's not formatted for easy printing."