HP ePrint Printers, for Those Who Prefer Their Spam in Hard Copy

Hewlett-Packard makes a fair bit of money selling printers, but it makes even more selling print cartridges, where its margins are 20-plus percent. So it’s in the company’s best interests to do all that it can to drive cartridge demand by encouraging as much printing as possible. Which is what it intends to do with a new line of Internet-connected printers that can print documents emailed to them.

This week, HP (HPQ) is rolling out a new line of touchscreen printers with Web access and their own email addresses. The company’s pitch: If you can email it or store it in the cloud, you can print it. Email a document or photo to one of its new ePrint printers and the device will automatically print it. Alternately, users can print Google Docs or Picasa photos directly from the cloud without using their desktop computers.

“What we believe is whereas in the old world where you had a PC and a printer and a driver, the new world is all about the Web-connected devices,” Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of HP’s Imaging and Printing Group, said at a launch event yesterday. “This is all about how we can create that content and print anywhere, anytime. What we want to do is add cloud-aware capabilities to our core printing business.”