Three-fourths of Respondents Indicate Need or Desire to Print Directly from Laptop or PDA  
HIGHLAND, UT, October 16, 2000— Users of handheld organizers, palm size computers, laptops and advanced mobile phones want to print directly from these devices, according to a new preliminary study sponsored by The Salutation Consortium, a non-profit corporation focused on providing technologies that improve information exchange among portable computing devices .

 

More than 300 mobile device users were contacted via telephone poll by independent market research firm, Strategic Alternatives of Florida.   Respondents were asked a series of questions regarding their mobile device usage and printing needs.

 

Of these more than 300 mobile device users surveyed, 75 percent or 225 people said they wanted an easy to use printing capability from their devices.

 

“What we have is a growing population that sees mobile as a way of life,said Robert Pascoe, president of the Consortium.   “As manufactures of these devices and software developers, we need to create the walkup and print tools necessary to make this a reality.   Service discovery software, the ability to find and communicate with different end devices, plays an invaluable role in solving this need. ”

 

Additional findings include 75 percent of the laptop users wanting a wireless printing solution.   Handheld organizer users want a wireless printing solution 46 percent of the time.   In addition, 36 percent of mobile device users wanted business centers such as those found in airports and hotels to provide walk up and use wireless printing.

 

IBM, a charter member of the Consortium, agrees with the need to continue research into the printing requirements and demands of mobile device users.

 

NEED FOR WIRELESS PRINTING SOLUTIONS    

“Walk-up and print is yet another of the many new services that mobile device users want and need.   We support The Salutation Consortium in its efforts to advance the technological requirements to make this a reality, said Brent Miller, Senior Programmer, for IBM’s Pervasive Computing Division.

 

The Salutation Consortium understands that the study is preliminary and suggests more extensive research be conducted to further validate the findings.   Visitors to the Consortium’s web site ( www.salutation.org ) are welcome and encouraged to download the study’s findings. In addition, the Consortium considers the research ongoing and is asking all those interested to access the survey from the site and provide their responses.

 

As an incentive to responding to the survey, the Consortium will be giving away a WinCE Organizer with a color screen to a randomly selected survey respondent.

 

About the Salutation Consortium 

The Salutation Consortium is a non-profit corporation that promotes and distributes, royalty-free and via open source, the Salutation Architecture, a service discovery and session management protocol developed and sponsored by leading information technology companies such as IBM.   The Salutation Architecture is independent of operating system, communications protocol or hardware platform.   It provides information exchange among and between different wireless handheld devices and office automation equipment.

 

IBM is a charter member of the Consortium. President of the Consortium, Robert Pascoe, is an employee of IBM whose job is to steer the Salutation organization.

 

In addition to IBM, member companies include America   Online, Axis Communications, Canon Inc., Consumer Electronics Association (CEA), Continental Automated Buildings Association (CABA), Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd., Fujitsu Limited,       Infrared Data Association (IrDA), Konica Corporation, Kyocera Mita Corporation, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., MBurst, Inc., Murata Machinery, Ltd., National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Oki Data Corporation., Ricoh Company, Ltd., Seiko Epson Corp., Square, Toshiba TEC Corporation, USA Technologies, Inc.

 

Academic members include Dr. Tamel Bose, Dr. Roger Debry, Marcus Giese, Kaspar Helldén, Professor Alan Leong, Professor Wenching Liou, Dr. Steven Reiss, Dr. Golden G. Richard III, Daniel Stevenson, Sudakshina Sharma Sarkar, Dr. Tomohiro Takagi, Heath Westover, Young Bok Yoon.