At the Symbian Smartphone Show, Software Imaging demoed an application that could print PDF files from UIQ smartphones(demo video coming soon). Colin Cox, a sales support engineer from Software Imaging, took the time to sit down with me for a chat…
Dear Colin, could you please tell us a bit more about who you are and what your company does?
I am a sales support engineer for Software Imaging:
Our company has been in the print industry for 20 years, creating driver kits for devices from various major print manufacturers…that’s where our printing expertise comes from.
We have noticed that there is a huge opportunity in the smartphone industry…there simply is no good printing solution out there. Thus, we created an SDK for application developers and phone manufacturers.
If I am a developer, how can I make my S60 application print?
At the moment, you can’t - we currently support only UIQ. However, S60 is already on our roadmap…the program is easy to port…
If I have an UIQ application, how can I get it printing?
Well…you need to get our SDK. Please contact us for further information on licensing!
If a phone manufacturer includes your print server into his phone, will developers have to pay once again to use it?
This is something that we decide on a case-by-case basis with the phone manufacturer.
Are phone manufacturers currently interested in the technology?
Absolutely - we’ve seen a lot of interest. The Symbian Smartphone Show has been particularly useful, making it easy for us to meet with a number of phone manufacturers and Symbian. We’ve had loads of users walk by expecting an application that can be purchased an taken home right from the stand…
Which printers do you support currently?
We currently support PCLXL/PCL6-based printers, as that allows us to cover most of the printing market. We plan to create PostScript, PCL5 drivers as necessary.
Consumer ink-jets will not be supported?
InkJet support is definitely on the roadmap. Ultimately, it comes down to what our customers want and their highest
priority so far has been laser printing.
In the past, developers have often complained about how printer manufacturers are uncooperative when asked for documentation. What have you experienced?
So far, manufacturers were cooperative. Keep in mind-we have worked with such manufacturers for 20 years creating drivers, and thus have an awful amount of knowledge in-house…
How does the printer connect to the phone?
As of now, the product can print to network printers reachable via WiFi. Options like Bluetooth and infrared are being considered…we basically started with the most-demanded, and make our way from there. Please keep in mind that our product is extremely modular…