An interesting point from yesterday's announcements in EMEA was that the biggest roll out in the history of HP's Imaging and Printing Group didn't cover any new range of printers, multi-function devices or scanners, in fact, we didn't unveil any new hardware at all in Berlin.  Like supplies, printer hardware remains core to our activity and market dominance, so why the absence?  Was this some form of oversight?  No, I can assure you it was not! 

Vyomesh (VJ) Joshi, executive vice president of HP's Imaging and Printing Group gave a clue in yesterday's satellite broadcast and Bill DeLacy, senior vice president and general manager of IPG EMEA picked up the theme this morning.

In short, of the global digital and printing market currently valued at $121 billion, $57 billion is covered by hardware (devices) and supplies.  And what constitutes the other half of this market . . . . . ?  Services and solutions - exactly what we announced yesterday:

• An alliance with Canon to enhance our managed print services offering (to cover the office production centre environment)
• Launching a global business unit dedicated to the needs enterprise print environment, thus consolidating our leadership of this space
• Rolling our Managed Print Services Payback Guarantee across EMEA - literally, we'll save your company money, absolutely risk free
• Nine new industry specific software solutions to enhance workflows, streamline business processes and generate even more efficiencies - our biggest solutions roll our ever

Today, a solid device portfolio is literally just the 'entrance fee' to the enterprise market.  For these companies, printing is simply a means to an end, and that end is measured in euros and centimes.  HP IPG is not merely aware of this reality - as yesterday's announcements confirm -we are driving it.  Put into this context, these data points from VJ and Bill's addresses speak for themselves:

• The average working spends 40% of his/her time looking for information
• Every $1 spent printing a page requires $9 to manage it, 90% of document costs lie outside the device
• Enterprises spend the equivalent of 6% of their revenue on printing and digital imaging
• 90% of enterprises to not track print costs
• 50% of Fortune companies will spend more on energy than print hardware
• Of the €120+ billion global printing and digital imaging market, more than half has nothing to do with hardware or supplies