Brother has demonstrated that the rise of the smart device has not signalled the ‘death of printing’ – as it marks the 6th anniversary of its iPrint&Scan app.
Data shows that more and more customers have utilised the app to print straight from their mobile device or tablet. According to Brother, “this makes working from smart devices even more seamless and hassle-free by cutting out the need to boot up a computer to send a document to print or to complete a scanning job.”
When the app was launched by the print and technology specialist in September 2011, 371,225 documents were sent to print, tracked globally. In the same month but six years on, just over 30 million documents were sent to print – demonstrating “staggering growth”, Brother stated, as the app celebrated its 6th year anniversary in September 2017.
At the turn of a new year, iPrint&Scan usage figures continued to soar, reaching the 1 billion* mark worldwide in January 2018.
Brother’s free app, available on Apple iPhone, Apple iPad, Android smartphones, Android tablets and Amazon Fire tablets, has been downloaded more than 6 million times on Android and iOS.
The app is available across Europe and has a variety of uses:
- As a way to print/scan from mobile devices inside a Local Area Network (LAN).
- As a way to print from mobile devices outside the LAN (also known as remote printing). To do that Brother’s iPrint&Scan uses Google Cloud Print.
The iPrint&Scan printing process is described by the OEM as being “simple”, with three basic steps: clicking print, choosing where to print from and selecting the desired document.
Customers can utilise the iPrint&Scan app to print from, or scan to, various cloud storage services including Dropbox, Evernote, Google Drive, OneDrive and Apple iCloud.
Scanning is equally straightforward, as users can select the scan option, press share or save and then pick the location of the scan. Copy and fax functions are also available via the app.
Hassan Masaud from Brother UK said: “Our data demonstrates that there is still a strong demand for printing but more and more customers are being smart about it and using mobiles and tablets to do so.
“We’re thrilled to be celebrating the fact that a staggering 1 billion documents have been sent to print through iPrint&Scan as we mark the app’s 6th birthday and look forward to continued download and usage in 2018.”
*1 billion pages is counted from the launch of iPrint&Scan in 2011. The print page was calculated based on the Brother server’s data conversion.
