By Tracy Cabrera
Print is not dead in the Philippines as computer giant HP Philippines gave recognition to the country’s remaining stature as Southeast Asia’s leading markets for inkjet printers.
On the sidelines of a training workshop for mom-entrepreneurs in Makati, HP Philippines category manager for home printing Trish Alonzo-Manabat cited that home printing segment still contributes significantly to HP’s business in the archipelago.
“It’s still very much alive,” she pointed out as she asserted that when discussions move towards printing, “despite the trend in AI, the digital trend, paperless trend, the Philippine market is still seen in terms of inkjet printers being one of the leading markets in the region.
“(In) Southeast Asia, I believe we’re at par with Thailand and Indonesia in terms of (. . .) size,” she enthused while noting that printers are still being used in the academe and in office spaces.
“It’s really seen in small offices, in education space, in the academic, in the hospitals. If you walk into a doctor’s clinic, you actually see our cartridge-based printers . . . still used by the doctors to print out yung reseta, medyo digital na rin sila,” the HP executive aptly mentioned.
“When you walk into a big hospital, you look at their billing. You see our office printing solutions printers there naman, our laser jet printers used for printing out receipts,” she added.
This was supported by HP Philippines managing director Ida Ong-Co: “Even the government agencies, actually, that’s still our consistent customer base.”
Manabat also underscored how HP has embedded artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities into its printers.
“AI allows optimized print formatting, which prompts the printer to print only the relevant contents of a web page instead of an entire web page,” she described.
