Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) unveils universal printing for mobile phones

With mobile phones becoming smarter and more capable as miniature offices every year, the services to allow more "office-like" functions have not developed as fast. That, or the software makers who have these services available are not marketing them well. Enter Hewlett-Packard Company (NYSE: HPQ). Hewlett Packard has announced 'Cloudprint' -- a service developed this year that will make it possible to print most documents on almost any printer in the world by storing and sharing those documents on a mobile phone.

What prompted such quick action from HP? The Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone. With the iPhone making the world take notice of a portable, pocketable device that does just a little bit of everything, HP apparently wanted to ride the expected consumer wave about always having a "little office" in their pocket and thus set out just months ago to develop the Cloudprint service. Have a cellphone with Internet access and a printer nearby? That is all you'll need, according to HP.

Instead of using a flash drive and a laptop (or anything else), HP engineers wanted to have one simple prerequisite to printing most documents while out and about. 1) access to a cellphone and 2) access to a printer. Those are two requirements most any businessperson has access to these days, right? HP apparently thought so. The service requires customers to virtually "print" documents to HP's servers over the Internet. Customers can then remotely access those documents on the screen of their wireless phones, which can then be sent to a nearby printer for printing.