Credit: European CEO
The OEM is tapping into the growing popularity of smartphone and tablet devices as users “are increasing their scanning and printing”.
Paul Birkett, Marketing and Sales Director for Samsung Printing Solutions, told European CEO that his division set out to create a “mobile ecosystem”, in which any user can, via the free app available from the iOS, Google Play or Windows Phone stores, “print or scan easily” at any Samsung MFP or single-function printer.
This function is available with either “authentication turned off or on, whereby the device will expect you to tap in again, and enter a secure PIN code”; otherwise the print job can start immediately. Additional security functions are available by means of Samsung’s Printer On technology, and “fully enterprise-capable solutions that integrate directly with standard security management platforms like active directory”. Standard enterprise platforms such as Oracle and Siebel are integrated, enabling the end user to “quickly and easily get work done: wherever they are, whenever they are”.
Birkett said Samsung was “looking at the way user workflows were likely to change in the future”, and one of their major conclusions was that a user “may only have a very small phone interface” with which to achieve complex printing tasks. The OEM addressed this by “combining the smartphone interface with the larger interface on the device”, enabling diverse ways in which the user can complete their printing tasks. Similar to a high-end tablet, the technology developed “looks and feels, through Android, like the technology that they’re using every day on their smartphone”.
John Webb, Managing Director of Samsung Enterprise Business, said “mobility and connectivity” are key to how “people live their lives today”. He continued: “It’s all about the user, and being able to do things when they want to, where they want to, how they want to. And so for us, it’s about how we empower that. How we give technology to the users, so that they can then build and amplify and augment what they’re doing for the businesses that they work for.”
Birkett said that the idea that mobile devices would be the death of office printing has proved to be untrue, citing IDC research that recorded a 43 percent increase in scanning from smartphone and tablet devices. He also mentioned that smartphone and tablet users on average have 4.1 devices which is “funnily enough, exactly the same as they’re using in their personal lives. That’s obviously presenting challenges to CIOs, CTOs, who are having to cater to these new devices and these new ways of working”.