DIGITAL reaches the tipping Point
The tipping point is when an idea becomes unstoppable, when a niche becomes the dominant forcue, and Stephen Nigro at HP sees signs that the tipping point is coming in print

IF IPEX '93 WAS A MILESTONE FOR Indigo, the place where it burst on the scene with digital colour printing, Drupa 2008 is going to be no less important for HP, the company that now owns Indigo. At that Ipex, Indigo was a relatively small player, at Drupa HP's stand will be smaller only than those of Heidelberg and Print City, It will be bigger than Xerox. It needs to be. Alongside the new Indigo 7000 press, the high speed dqet web press, there will be a range of its large format inkjet printers including an as yet unseen machine said to be as large as two football pitches". That comment came from an American, so cannot be taken as an accurate measure given that Americans have only a passing acquaintance with football. It did not come from Stephen Nigro, who as senior vice president of the imaging and graphics business, heads the division, even though he is most defunitely American. His background includes spells as a research scientist in HP's inkjet labs, giving him great knowledge of the thermal idqet technology that HP has developed into a modular system of robust, relatively low cost heads that can be bolted together to come up with any number of different products. This Scaleable Print Technology was first used in a photo printing kiosk, then in an office copier-printer, and will now be seen in new wide format inkjet presses and the high speed inkjet web that HP will show at Drupa.  
(full article can be found at  http://www.fcm-ezines.com/tpb/tpb-mar08/ page 34)