HP strengthens hold on leadership in digital imaging

HP's digital projectors walked away from Gartner's RetailVision Europe Autumn 2004 Event with the award for Best Digital Home Product. For the past 13 years, the Best of RetailVision Awards have been acknowledged as one of the computer retail industry's leading honours, with more than 140 retail executives from over 20 European countries evaluating the latest consumer technology. This is a significant achievement for HP, who only launched its first consumer projector early this year.

HP's continued recognition of excellence through the leading industry awards confirms its strength across the imaging and printing solution market. Influential industry bodies from the digital imaging and printing world are unified in their belief of HP's ability in all areas of this thriving market, from commercial printers and technology through to consumer products for the home and small business user.

Recent industry recognition for HP's contribution to consumer imaging and printing doesn't reside only with its projectors. The new sleek and stylish HP Photosmart R707 digital camera received a gold medal from the Digital Imaging Websites Association (DIWA).

The association, which compromises 12 independent digital imaging Websites from Europe and North America, praised HP for extending their expertise in printing and scanning to digital cameras. They used this product to prove that high performance and low price is not an impossible combination.

The new HP Photosmart 245 not only established a new printing category for small photo printers, but has taken the leading stance. Earlier this year, EISA, the largest editorial multimedia organisation in Europe, awarded the HP Photosmart 245 photo printer with the Best Mini Printer award.

In September 2004, HP won the Label Industry Award for New Innovation during the Label Industry Global Awards 2004 with the HP Indigo. The HP Indigo as is an innovative, pioneering entity in digital label printing. The judges of the awards praised HP Indigo's latest digital label press technology, the ws4050, for revolutionising the way labels are produced and supplied.

HP's large format printers have long been respected in the industry for delivering the highest quality in graphic printing for design, proofing and photography and the recent accolade from the Technical Image Press Association confirms this.

During the TIPA meeting in Barcelona, earlier this year, the HP Designjet 130 was voted Best Large Format Photo Printer in Europe 2004 by the panel of chief and technical editors from 30 leading European photo and imaging magazines. The voting editors cover 12 European countries which reiterates the broad cross-country appeal and strength of HP's printers.

Imaging and Printing Group EMEA marketing vice president Phil Darnell said: "HP is committed to innovation and development of the imaging and printing market. We will continue to invest in our product range to ensure we remain strong in both the consumer and commercial sectors and with our pipeline of exiting new products, we are looking forward to obtaining more awards across the EMEA region."

HP's continuous recognition confirms its strength across the complete imaging and printing solution. Influential industry bodies from the digital imaging and printing world are unified in their belief of HP's ability in all areas of this thriving market, from commercial printers and technology through to consumer products for the home and small business user.

The company has also recently introduced new HP Remote Graphics software that allows customers in graphics-intensive fields such as engineering and graphic design to collaborate with teams across geographically dispersed regions in real time in a more productive manner.

This easy-to-use interactive 3D graphics software application eliminates the need to upgrade to an expensive 3D graphics card on each user's machine. The software can be used with workstations, notebooks or commercial desktop PCs.

HP Remote Graphics allows customers to work with large 3D models. I can reduce expensive travel costs associated with face-to-face meetings by enabling such information to be transferred securely across a standard network connection by hosting the intellectual property within a secured network boundary.

Through HP Remote Graphics software, engineers can share their designs and projects regardless of their location. Instructors can give tutorials and remotely oversee and provide input to students in real time. IT support staff can better visualise and assist users on remote computing systems. Early product designs can be delivered to a remote client location from the main sales office. Entire industries can now realise the productivity and flexibility benefits of working from home while connecting to the office.