Nokia, Samsung, and Siemens join printing forum — MobileMonday Global: Industry News

^{5 billion camera phone print images in 2004} Nokia, Samsung, and Siemens join printing forum

1 May 2004 at 10:59 GMT Timo Poropudas

The Mobile Imaging and Printing Consortium (MIPC) announced on Friday that mobile handset makers Nokia, Samsung, and Siemens have become strategic members of the consortium.

MIPC is an industry group founded to drive solutions and implementation guidelines for providing consumers with a simple and spontaneous experience when printing images taken with camera phones.

Consortium founders and printing industry leaders Canon, Epson and HP believe the MIPC is now strongly positioned to deliver guidelines enabling consumers to reliably and easily print camera phone images at home.

The objective of the MIPC is to make these printing guidelines available during the second half of 2004. Existing connectivity technology standards and solutions such as Bluetooth wireless technology, printing from memory cards and PictBridge will be the underlying connectivity platforms for the consortium's work.

37 billion prints in 2008

"The mobile handset makers' contributions are critical to the consortium because of the collaboration required across the hardware, software, and wireless technologies involved in creating mobile imaging and printing solutions," said Ramon Garrido, chairman of the MIPC and program director, Consumer Imaging and Printing, HP.

According to a recent report by InfoTrends, camera phone users are expected to print more than 5 billion images taken in 2004 and that number is forecasted to grow to 37.2 billion by 2008, when 85% of all mobile phones sold is estimated to feature an embedded camera.