Web-to-Print on your iPhone

The Printing industry and Apple Computer Inc have a long association stretching back as far as the very early 80s. Then, it was the Mac SE, together with Postscript and applications like Aldus Pagemaker and Quark Express, that decimated the traditional phototypesetting industry in a little over 2 years. Next to fall to the relentless onslaught of the Mac, Quark and Photopshop were the big page makeup systems from Scitex, Hell and Crosfield. Since those days, we've grown accustomed to the Mac as an integral part of every printer's workflow, in fact pre-press studios the world over are utterly reliant on all things Mac.

If, like me, you work away from your office or home on a regular basis, but still need to check and reply to e-mails as if you were at your own desk, you will have experienced issues with using a mobile phone as if it were a computer. I tried a Nokia, a Sony and a Blackberry but found the experiences inadequate and frustrating, not to mention unnecessarily complex and unreliable. When driving down the M1, it's just not practical to stop at a service station, get out the laptop and find a WiFi hotspot that's free (or spend another £190 a year on a 3G data card). Try firing up your laptop in the back of a London cab between appointments!

Enter the iPhone. Apple has done the same for mobile communications as it did for typesetting and digital imaging. It's transformed the usability, effectiveness and efficiency of an already converged series of media channels. It's a phone, a camera, an iPod, a portable disk drive, a GPS system and a video camera (New 3GS model). It's also a computer with a pretty fast chip and 256mb of RAM which seems to be enough as the Apple OS is very efficient.

It's the sheer elegance and absolute simplicity of use, together with an army of very clever application developers, that has caused millions of people to become not just customers but fans. The App Store now has more than 50,000 applications, many of which are free but rarely cost more than £2. More than one billion downloads took place within nine months of its launch. More than one million of the new 3GS phones were sold in the first week and the new 3.0 OS was downloaded by more than six million people in 3 days.

Just as in previous disruptive technology launches, it's a combination of hardware and software that makes things happen. Setting up an iPhone to receive work and personal e-mail is simplicity itself - so much so, I doubt you'll even refer to the manual as it's so intuitive. If you travel a lot, apps like TubeDeluxe and NationalRail are extremely useful and time saving. If you travel abroad for work or holidays, you can type in words in English and have the iPhone speak your translated words in virtually any language. An App called AirSharing allows you to use your iPhone as an external disk using your WiFi connection to either a Mac or a PC. This means you can carry all your important PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, word documents etc with you (or use GoogleDocs in the Cloud).

In the last few weeks, several companies have launched applications for the iPhone that allow users to create postcards and greetings cards. Using your own photos and typing into supplied variable data templates, you can now have a single postcard printed and sent to your loved ones for as little as 99 cents if within the US or $1.50 if outside the US. This is W2P (Web-to-Print) on the iPhone. It's easier than using a computer, it's quicker than using a computer and it's more convenient than using a computer.

None of these application developers come from the printing industry. HazelMail PostCards creator, Michael Lato, for example, was a founding member of fotolog.com, a photoblogging service that currently has 22 million members. Postino, another postcard app developed by AnguriaLabs in Italy, is owned by GetConnected, an IT Services business.

These companies have gone for global reach from the outset. Why? Because they can - easily! It's not a huge market; even if 20% of the near 20 million iphone users send two postcards a year, that's still only $5m revenue. The point, however, is that the iphone (and I'm sure subsequent versions of Nokia/Palm/Sony/Motorola etc will get better now they've been shown the way) will create a mobile computing environment where all manner of print related workflow issues can be accomplished. Files created and prepared for print using online templates can also be pushed to the high resolution screen of the iPhone, with its touch-screen zoom simplicity.

All this means that we now have true Web-to-Print (W2P) on the Phone. Perhaps we will also see the acronym W2P meaning Web-to-Phone? Either way, here is yet another reason why now is the time to take your printing business online.

www.w2p.co.uk