Several of Lexmark's product series have been Mobile Printing Alliance (Mopria) certified for wireless printing from mobile devices, but what exactly is the importance of this certification?
Lexmark Director Worldwide Solutions Marketing, Randy Sparks, discusses this and Lexmark's leadership in mobile printing...
Q. Lexmark has been developing mobile print solutions for many years. How does joining and certifying different devices augment Lexmark's leadership in mobile print?
A. Customer intimacy is a big part of what makes Lexmark a successful company, and we are experts at identifying customer pain-points. So when mobile printing began emerging years ago, we viewed it as an extension of our philosophy of providing solutions that solve our customers' business problems.
The two primary mobile operating systems (OS) our customers are using (iOS and Android), weren't designed with the same print capabilities users are accustomed to in the laptop world. The concept of choosing 'File' and then choosing 'Print' doesn't exist. But the need to print does.
While there is certainly a business shift occurring to better leverage the advantages of mobile devices, there are many core business processes that don't change simply because a user has a mobile device.
Eventually, OS designers recognised that business users still have a core business need for output, and the user experience began to improve.
Today, everyone recognises that mobility is changing rapidly, and the technological landscape is evolving. Lexmark's customers are still deciding how they want to integrate mobile devices into their core business processes. Doing so means adoption of new standards, new devices and new ways to connect - and much of this is still in development.
Q. Is mobile printing easy to develop for business users?
A. Today, we see that two primary methods of supporting printing from mobile devices have emerged: printing directly from the device and printing from the device through a server.
Printing directly from a device requires that the mobile device and the printer be able to do a couple of basic things. First, they have to be able to connect and talk to one another (have a conversation). Secondly, the mobile device needs to be able to send the document to the printer in a format it can understand. Most printers understand several different document formats: jpeg, tiff, html, pdf and, in rare cases, a few others. The challenge comes when a document isn't in one of those formats and has to be converted into a readable/understood format. This is one of the reasons the second method of printing from a mobile device was introduced.
Converting a document to another type can be tricky, especially in the case of Microsoft Office documents. There are multiple versions of the 'standards', embedded objects to translate and all sorts of other snag points. Instead of trying to solve all of those on a mobile device or a printer, methods have been developed that allow the mobile device to send the document to a server. The server does all of the heavy lifting (such as conversion into a recognised format), and then passes the document on to the printer for output.
There are many other advantages to using a server infrastructure, such as secure print release and cloud printing.
Q. Why is Mopria important to Lexmark's mobility strategy?
A. Mopria is a technology that will help Android users print directly from their devices without requiring a server (iOS has a similar technology called AirPrint). Like AirPrint, Mopria will help mobile users establish a connection with a printer, and get the document they want to print into a format the printer can understand.
Prior to the introduction of Mopria, Android users didn't have a standard method of printing directly from their devices. The objective of Mopria is to establish this standard. Though there is still some work to be done, there is a clear customer need to print directly from Android devices, and we are committed to providing access to that solution as quickly and broadly as possible.
*Go to: http://www.incontextmag.com/blog/2014/mobile-explosion-creates-printing-issues-for-enterprises.html to learn more about mobile printing trends and why mobile printing will someday simply be called 'printing'.
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