The State of On-demand Printing

On March 10, 2008, HP announced a move into the continuous feed ink-jet color printing market. The HP Inkjet Web Press is a 30˝ wide web press. This created excitement because the competitive products are 20˝ wide. This twin-engine duplex printing engine press runs at 400 fpm, which equates to 2,600 letter or A4 ppm. It is the fastest and largest format size of all these new presses, and was an impressive site at Drupa. According to HP, the cost per print is the lowest of all these new presses. HP indicates that an A4 color page with 30 percent coverage will cost $0.01 and a basic monochrome page will cost $0.0015.