IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2015 - 44

Tablets and mobile devices
are able to replace PCs because
of their high-performance CPUs,
large memory sizes, and
high-resolution displays.

90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0

Worldwide Smartphone OS Market Share
(Share in Unit Shipments)

Android
IOS
Others

Windows Phone
BlackBerry OS

20
11
20 Q4
12
20 Q1
12
20 Q2
12
20 Q3
12
20 Q4
13
20 Q1
13
20 Q2
13
20 Q3
13
20 Q4
14
20 Q1
14
20 Q2
14
20 Q3
14
Q
4

(%)

MFPs have the compute capability approach of PCs and
usability that is on par with tablets and phones. Tablets and
mobile devices are able to replace PCs because of their highperformance CPUs, large memory sizes, and high-resolution
displays. The advancement of touch technology and the rich
ecosystem of applications and services, coupled with the
mobility enabled by long battery life, have often made the use
of these mobile devices more desirable than the PC. These
advancements have enabled the usage of tablets to shift from
being passive consumption devices to rich productivity tools.
The large number of services and the ease of development
using these new software development kits (SDKs) has greatly
reduced the cost of creating applications, resulting in functions
and services never dreamed of just three or four years ago.
Similar changes in both the capability and the proliferation
of new functions are also seen in the printing device. In 2014,
new MFPs were introduced with 10.1-in touchscreen liquid
crystal display, a 1-GHz Cortex A7 quad-core CPU, 2 GB of
RAM, 4 GB of ROM, and Android as an application platform
[1]. The hardware of these new printers was powerful enough
to run applications that have convenient graphical user interfaces, which made interaction between the devices and users
more effective. The large display touchscreen panel helped
users edit the documents and images directly from the printer
itself instead of on a smartphone or tablet. The broad usage of
mobile devices has enabled the functions to be intuitive and

Source: IDC, 2014Q4
FIGURE 3. The increasing proportion of Android devices [2].
(Source: IDC Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker,
February 2015).
44 IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine

july 2015

minimizes any training required with new devices. The
interoperability between this new class of MFP and mobile
devices will create a complete new paradigm and a rich set of
workflows in the near future (Figure 3).
Android is the dominant mobile OS. As the number of new
Android mobile devices keeps increasing, consumers have
become very familiar with Android UX. With these new
advanced MFPs, users are able to have the same UX with the
printer as with their mobile devices. This has greatly reduced the
barriers of adoption of the new technology. Furthermore, the
standardization of these functions into an SDK for these services
will produce the same effect in printing as it did on mobile
devices (e.g., tablets and mobile phones).
The number of Android applications is ever increasing, with
document-editing applications such as Microsoft Office Mobile,
Docs To Go, and Polaris Office, to name a few. The number of
app developers is doubling almost every year (Figure 4). Printers
that have Android platforms are able to connect with these applications so that users can have a greater range of functions on the
printers and mobile devices. These app developers will also harness innovation with the new services supported by the SDK on
these Android printers and MFPs [3].
Adopting Android as a platform on CPU rich-printing hardware allows users to manipulate documents, edit image files, and
print directly from the printer. A printer can then become a standalone device that can generate, edit, and print documents and
image files. The definition of a new MFP function, computing,
leaves little to the imagination to realize that soon these devices
will replace PC/printer combinations in hospitality locations, creating a plethora of new vertical solutions and potential new kiosks.
Image scanning and printing are typical jobs that MFPs
support. The user's standard workflow is as follows for the use
case of scanning a book, editing the content, and then printing
the final work output.
1) Begin a scan job on an MFP.
2) Send the files to user workspace through e-mail, file transfer protocol (FTP), server message block, or other supported protocol.
3) Edit the image file or attach the file using office or imaging applications.
4) Send the image file or documents to the MFP for printing.
5) Retrieve printed documents from the MFP.
Workbook Composer is an Android application for scanning, editing, and printing images [5]. A user scans a book and
edits images by selecting areas after scanning using the application. The selected areas are rearranged into one page, and the
editing is complete (Figure 5). The user then prints the image
from the selected MFP. The MFP supports a rich set of output
options for this workflow, enabling the user to send the image
through e-mail or to the cloud by using familiar workflow processes used frequently on their mobile devices. This action is
completed through any number of available applications, such
as Dropbox (Figure 6).
Let us look at a scenario in which teachers are making materials for class. They can copy and edit directly and achieve a
higher level of efficiency with the application and the MFP

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - July 2015