News

Print may be Bluetooth's biggest application after phones

Ricoh has decided to make a concerted effort to drive the print market into wireless connectivity with Bluetooth, predicting print - especially colour print - will be a major wireless application next year.

What isn't clear, however, is whether this will change printing habits.

At 3Com, the company is close to shipping a small Bluetooth device which plugs into the parallel port of a Laserjet, and gets its electric power from the printer. A similar product is planned by Epson, and Hewlett-Packard itself has officially endorsed the idea that wireless printing will be the way to go.

In one sense, this is just a replacement for the infra-red printing option which a lot of printers have had for years. However, this was never seen as much of a corporate-printing feature, rather, it was a way of allowing the home user to print without buying a print cable. Bluetooth, however, is more of a network solution.

"At this point, we're looking at a colour laser printer with Bluetooth for under £2,000, shipping this September," said Ricoh Solutions Manager, Nigel Allen. "We're going to be pushing this hard, and I expect us to include Bluetooth in other printers later."

But staff at Ricoh said it was far too soon to judge how this would change print habits. "Right now, we're seeing a huge trend towards properly managed network printing," said Allen, "and we're selling software to make this possible. But as the numbers of bluetooth-enabled notebook computers go up, it's possible that people may decide to take their notebook to the printer they want to use. We'll just have to see how the trend unfolds."

The AP3000 printer was shown at CeBIT in Germany last month. It's one of a new breed of "non-colour-critical products" which is aimed at the office user of colour output, rather than at the Pantone-obsessed graphics department. Office managers are likely to encourage the purchase of these products because it will cut down on the amount spent on ink-jet ink - which is very costly.