Printer maker Epson America Inc. announced today it has joined the Mopria Alliance , a non-profit organization focused on standardizing wireless printing from mobile devices.
The alliance’s end goal is to create a common standard that would make printing compatible from any mobile device for any printer. It focuses on improving the end user experience and giving application developers an open environment to add print options to their mobile apps. It also works to educate consumers and businesses on the possibilities of mobile printing.
In joining the alliance, Epson is trying to do its part to help with those plans, says Patrick Chen, product manager of mobile connectivity for Epson America.
“Today, there are four major mobile operating systems (Apple iOS, Amazon Fire OS, Android and Windows) and even more device brands … Add to that millions of Apps and the mobile user has a lot of choices. This is great thing because it fosters healthy competition, but makes it extremely difficult if you want a uniform mobile printing experience,” Chen wrote in a blog post last week.
“That’s why Epson is joining – to collaborate with the print industry to come up with standards that can cut through all this complexity and make mobile printing as easy as File>Print … you, the mobile user, will begin seeing a more intuitive mobile printing experience spread to more mobile devices and operating systems. In the end, you’ll have one simple way to print regardless of what brand of mobile device, printer or operating system you’re using.”
As a new member of the Mopria Alliance, one of the first projects Epson will be working on is to offer support for the Mopria plug-in for Android KitKat, or OS 4.4. While Google Inc. has already added a print feature to KitKat, the plug-in will allow Android users to connect to many different brands of printers and print directly from them.
The Mopria Alliance also supports peer-to-peer connection, Wi-Fi direct printing, and near field communication tap –to-print features.
Epson isn’t the first large printing and imaging company to join the organization. Founded by Canon Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co., Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., and Xerox Corp. Ltd., some of its other members also include Adobe Systems Inc., Brother Industries Ltd., and Lexmark International Inc.
Watch this video on the Mopria Alliance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3qh5fIRwJM