Why Mobile Printing Is Invading the Office – A look at Xerox’s New Android App

When many of us think about mobile printing, I bet we think about printing OUTSIDE the office. But think again – most mobile printing is what we want to occur in the office, but it’s often challenging.

We have our mobile devices in the offices but most of the times we have to forward a document to a desktop computer, to print to a printer.

The Challenge

Windows and Mac computers were designed to easily print to just about any printer. They come with (or you can easily download) “drivers” (a fancy term for software) that enables these devices to easily print to connected printers.

Mobile devices were not designed like that – it’s often a lot harder to connect a tablet or smartphone to a printer. People want to print from their mobile devices, yet over 50% of smartphone users and over 35% of tablet users do not know how to print from their device because they don’t have a printer that connects to their mobile device.

Make Mobile Print Easy with Xerox and the Print Service Plug-In for Android

Recently Xerox develop an app for Android that makes it easy to print to our latest Xerox printers and multifunction devices.

Fred Ramsey, Product Marketing Manager for Xerox talked to me about the evolution of mobile printing. He explained that while computers have evolved with print drivers, Microsoft Office compatibility, and other features, these features have more slowly migrated to our smartphones.

In particular, because Android based phones have several different flavors, printing from them can be challenging. To solve this, Google’s Android KitKat version came with printing technology embedded.

For the KitKat (4.4) version and above, Xerox developed a “print service plug-in” which now makes it much easier to print from your Android smartphone to Xerox printers.

This plug-in from Xerox does more than just “print” but similar to desktop computer printer software you can manage stapling, finishing, secure print (using a pin code to release a print job) and more. ARVE Error: need id and provider

So what does the future of mobile printing look like?

In the future you can expect to see more Internet connected devices and your phone becoming a hub for a more personalized experience in your personal life and business.

People are not looking for a paperless office. What they’re looking for is better integration between all of their devices – mobile devices, desktop computers, peripherals and printers. To learn more about the Xerox Print Service Plug-In for Android and to see a full list of supported printers, visit Google Play.

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About the author

Ramon Ray, Marketing & Technology Evangelist, Smallbiztechnology.com & Infusionsoft. Full bio at http://www.ramonray.com . Visit his Small Business Solutions Blog Author Page to get in touch on Google+, Twitter or Facebook.

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