HP shifting gears from 'printers to printing'

New York

August 30th, 2007

In order to envisage the change of guard from printers to printing, US based
Hewlett-Packard (HP) is looking at launching its online photo service focused,
Snapfish in India. Consequently, the company will also weave a network of
printing service providers to compliment its overall offering in the printing
domain for this region. HP is all set to bring its online photo focused
initiative SnapFish to Indian shores by 2007 year end.

"India is a very important market for us and we are going to bring this
change from printers to printing. Ever since we acquired SnapFish in March 2005,
its registered users have increased from 13 million in 2005 to more than 42
million global registered users today. We would be bringing Snapfish to India by
this year end and consequently develop a set of print service focused partner
set in this region," informed Larry Lesley, Senior VP-Digital Photography
and Entertainment, Imaging and Printing Group, HP.

Encouraging the development of the overall printing ecosystem, HP already has
partnerships with some of the biggest printing solution providers like District
Photo, a direct-to-consumer photo service, OfficeDepot and Staples in the US. As
it plans to launch Snapfish in India, the company would be looking forward to
having similar partnerships in place in this region as well.

"We are working with select 'print service providers' in the US and we
would be having a similar strategy to work with such partners in other
geographies as well. India is surely a high growth potential market for us and
we would surely be looking at aligning ourselves at multiple levels," he
added.

With convergence of mobile devices driving a lot of digital content to the
web, the company is also looking at mobility as an area of growth and promise.
"Mobile is a space which has changed a lot and is still evolving. SnapFish
has a mobile compatibility as well, so we would surely look at mobility as one
are of focus for us," he added.

Delivering a platform to store and share pictures for the end user, today
Snapfish has more than 2 billion photos stored and has consumed more than 4
petabytes of data storage till now.

"Snapfish has gained a lot of popularity globally and we expect to do
the same within India as well. The way it allows users to store and share photos
uniquely has emerged as one of the biggest positives for our success," he
explained.

Printing from the web!

Earlier, delivering his keynote for HP's print 2.0, its Executive VP,
Imaging and Printing Group, Vyomesh Joshi emphasized on the company's shift in
strategy to focus more on the printing services front. "Our Print 2.0
strategy focuses on three areas of delivering a next generation digital printing
platform that increases print speeds and lowers cost of printing for high-volume
commercial markets, making it easier to print from the web and extending HP's
digital content creation and publishing platforms across all customer segments.
This strategy is designed to accelerate HP's ability to capture a significant
portion of the 53 trillion pages expected to be printed by 2010," he added.

(The author was hosted in New York by HP)