By Andy Slawetsky, President, Industry Analysts, Inc.

Traditional business print volumes are shrinking at an estimated 6-8%/year. So what does behemoth printer manufacturer HP do? They launch an A3 copier/MFP line! These products will be marketed exclusively as part of their MPS program, meaning most typical HP print customers may never know they even have A3 products.

HP has had a glaring hole in their portfolio for years. They dabbled with A3 a few times in the past with their short-lived Edgeline inkjet products and prior to that, a brief partnership with Konica Minolta. The difference here is, these devices will not be distributed through the traditional BTA channel as were the ones just mentioned.

HP realized a while ago they needed an A3 line to be a credible MPS option for many customers and for the past several years, they’ve used Canon imageRUNNER ADVANCE products to fill the void, sold under the Canon brand. Now HP is taking things up a notch by offering customers their own branded products, which are rebranded Sharp MFPs.

Specifically, HP is taking on the 51-PPM, 56-PPM, 62-PPM and 70-PPM MFPs – all are color except the 56-PPM device. Products should start rolling out in February 2014 and will be sold in the US, UK, Belgium, France, Germany, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland and Australia. I find it ironic the press release came from Barcelona and Spain wasn’t listed as one of the initial countries they’re launching in.

So the two questions I have are why A3 and why Sharp?

The “Why A3” is the easier more obvious answer. They want to sell HP products to their customers, not devices with someone else’s name on it.

The second question is a bit more compelling. Why would HP choose Sharp when they’ve had a long-standing relationship with Canon on A3 and especially for their A4 laser line (Canon manufactures the engines for the LaserJet products)? I asked Pradeep Jatwani, Senior VP, HP LaserJet and Enterprise Management this very question. He essentially said it was because Sharp’s UI was extremely easy to work with, among other reasons.

Pradeep reiterated that HP is highly committed to MPS and solutions are increasingly becoming more and more critical to MPS sales. Canon’s MFPs utilize their Canon Multifunctional Embedded Application Platform (MEAP) technology in their user interfaces. MEAP is one of the more powerful user interface platforms in MFPs but one knock on it is that Canon is very slow and methodical with the approval process of what they allow/approve on their UI.

Conversely, Sharp Open Systems Architecture (OSA) is the exact opposite. Just about anyone can develop to it and while there’s a process to become an approved developer, Sharp doesn’t make developers go through the same process that they go through with Canon. It makes sense to me that HP would choose Sharp out of all possible vendors from which to obtain this kind of hardware. MFPs are all about the UI and Sharp is arguably the easiest to develop to.

Unlike HP’s arrangement with Canon, where I assume it could take months, if not years for Canon to approve software developments for their UI, it’s possible that HP may not even need to discuss their UI plans with Sharp. Understand, I’m making a lot of assumptions here and I may be talking out of my you-know-what but hey, I’m an analyst and this is what I do.

HP did say that they are not terminating their agreement with Canon and they have many customers that may prefer to stay with the imageRUNNER devices and they will support them with whatever they want.

HP wouldn’t share unit projections and they’ve never told analysts how many Canon devices they’ve sold. I wouldn’t expect it be an overly large number but it does make HP’s MPS offering considerably more formidable. I believe the devices will be serviced and supported by Sharp dealers and branches until HP has the capacity to service them themselves.

The bottom line is, most of you selling printer hardware have never run into HP selling Canon MFPs. Most of you won’t run into HP selling re-labeled Sharp MFPs. If you do, it means you’re in some good MPS deals! Sharp is hardly over distributed compared to some brands and they do not have a significant global MPS program at the level of an HP (or Xerox or Ricoh, etc.), meaning HP won’t have to compete against Sharp very much, if at all. If HP can integrate the Sharp MFPs into their program, which OSA will facilitate, Sharp seems like a great choice.