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— Anand Parthasarathy

High-tech kirana shop: HP unveiled a platform that does double duty as business PC and ‘point-of-sale’ machine for small enterprises, at its annual showcase in Hong Kong on Wednesday.

Anand Parthasarathy

Hong Kong, Sept. 17 Hewlett Packard’s search for new markets in the personal computer space has led it to turn its eyes and talent towards the world’s burgeoning retail selling sector. It used its annual Asia-Pacific media conference this week to unveil several solutions for the small and medium businesses in this niche, including a ‘point-of-sale’ machine that could do double duty.

In addition to full cash register and checkout functionality, including barcode scanner and receipt printer, the rp3000 POS solution doubles as a standard business PC — allowing small enterprises to manage inventory, maintain tax records, generate supply orders and design marketing material, which they can churn out in-house on a complimentary printer.

The basic US design has been recast for the cost-sensitive Asian ‘mandi’ by a combined development team based in India, Taiwan and China, explained HP Asia-Pacific Vice President for Commercial Systems (Personal Systems Group), Mr Dennis Mark, during a special briefing for Business Line.

The model, which will soon become available in India, has been equipped to handle harsh local conditions, including dusty non-AC environment, and features user-friendly ‘touch sensitive’ screen options. For the Indian market — with likely demand for language or State-specific variants — HP is already talking to value-adding Indian partners for the software, Mr Mark added.

From large kirana shops to small supermarket chains, the solution would add tech muscle to retailing, HP says;the two-in-one concept is expected to appeal to retailers who might want to buy just one PC.

In another initiative which works under SAP’s enterprise solutions, HP is offering automated invoice processing — from documents capture, using one of its multifunction print-scan-copy-print machines with optical character recognition from ReadSoft, to a PC-based workflow solution.

In other launches at the two-day event, HP unveiled new editions to its TouchSmart desktop PC offerings from last year, a new HDX series of entertainment laptops with full high-definition video, and home and small office inkjet printers with built-in wireless capability.... anticipating a day when one can print documents stored on a laptop or desktop PC on a nearby printer without wires or special driver software. “Wireless is the way we are going in all our consumer printers,” Mr Chris Morgan, Asia-Pacific Vice-President for HP’s Imaging and Printing group said.

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