This Month's Spectrum Summary:

(The following is an excerpt from the September 2006 issue of Spectrum, a proprietary monthly briefing published exclusively for the clients of I.T. Strategies, Inc. © 2006)

HP's New Scitex Piezo Head Line Signals Shifting Industry Focus

Hewlett Packard earlier this month signaled a long term strategy shift when it announced its own piezo print head program. Our Mark Hanley attended HP's product launch in Barcelona and feels this move could be an industry changing event. Mark, Marco Boer, and Liz Ziepniewski discuss the ramifications. They are impressed with HP's apparent fast turnaround from piezo skeptic to piezo promoter. It was only about a year ago that HP acquired Scitex Vision. The expectation is that this signals a major interest in industrial markets.

HP, using MEMS technology for its new piezo program, indicates large volume, low unit price capability. The current expectation is that HP will be using the heads for its own printer products, not marketing to other OEMs. One goal may be to achieve the cost/speed thresholds needed to penetrate the screen printing market.

The recent series of acquisitions may be added evidence of a coming industry shift: Fuji Film and Dimatix/Spectra, Sericol and Avecia; EFI and VUTEk; Dainippon Screen and Inca, and now this move by HP. These may indicate that now there are companies with the large resources needed to seriously address wide format and other industrial markets.

This move is also seen as a vote of confidence by HP in fixed-array. HP's first iteration is not yet quite there, but the head configuration and expected lower per-head pricing are seen as steps in that direction. It is fixed-array that offers the realistic potential to seriously impact analog printing markets.

HP's new X2 piezo heads are designed for UV inks and specifically target industrial applications. Its inks are described as "100% solids," with the claimed advantages of no IR dryer needed, no VOCs and rapid solidification. HP also claims that, with UV curing, its machine footprint is much smaller than that of a solvent printer, and that image durability and substrate options are much broader.

Never before, the analysts note, has the industrial market received so much attention by major industry vendors.HP's new piezo head program may play a strong role in making industrial printing an industry-changing reality.