Wireless handset industry leaders join Mobile Imaging and Printing Consortium to drive new consumer printing solutions

MIPC is an industry group founded to drive solutions and implementation guidelines for providing consumers with a simple and spontaneous experience when printing images taken with camera phones.

Consortium founders and printing industry leaders Canon, Epson and HP believe the MIPC is now strongly positioned to deliver guidelines enabling consumers to reliably and easily print camera phone images at home. The objective of the MIPC is to make these printing guidelines available during the second half of 2004.

Existing connectivity technology standards and solutions such as Bluetooth(TM) wireless technology, printing from memory cards and PictBridge will be the underlying connectivity platforms for the consortium's work.

'As camera phone resolution continues to improve, the demand to print photos at home will continue to increase and the MIPC wants to be at the forefront of providing consumers with the best possible solutions to simplify printing at home,' said Ramon Garrido, chairman of the MIPC and program director, Consumer Imaging and Printing, HP.

'The mobile handset makers' contributions are critical to the consortium because of the collaboration required across the hardware, software and wireless technologies involved in creating mobile imaging and printing solutions.'

'We project continued accelerated use of camera phones for the next five years and believe that the number of consumers who will want to print their images at home will increase significantly by 2008,' said Jill Aldort, senior research analyst, InfoTrends. 'As camera resolution and features such as optical zoom improve, more images will be captured, shared, saved and printed. Work done by the MIPC will ensure that printing at home is as easy and reliable as possible.'

According to a recent report by InfoTrends, camera phone users are expected to print more than 5 billion of the total images taken in 2004 and that number is forecasted to grow to 37.2 billion by 2008, when 85% of all mobile phones sold is estimated to feature an embedded camera.

'As a strong supporter of openness and industry-wide collaboration, we welcome and recognize the need for initiatives such as the Mobile Imaging and Printing Consortium,' said Mike Butler, director of Business Strategy and Development, Imaging Business Unit, Nokia. 'Our global presence, expertise in mobility and understanding of consumer behavior provides Nokia with a unique perspective to ensure easy-to-use and reliable wireless printing solutions for camera phone users.'

'Our goal is to create a mobile world of digital convergence and we are always trying to develop new solutions for information and communication handsets through the use of advanced technology and design,' said H. Woo Kim, vice president of Business Strategy Team, Samsung Electronics. 'A major component of that convergence is in digital imaging and we believe that users will increasingly want to print the images they capture from camera phones.'

'Mobile Phones with integrated cameras are enjoying increasing demand globally. Intelligent applications enhancing the functionality of such mobiles and simplifying their usage are growing in importance. Bridging the gap between mobile digital imaging and printed copies are very much in our focus,' cited Anders Unosson, vice president Applications & Services, Siemens mobile phones.