A Marriage Of Retail & Mobile Printing

By Mike Monocello, chief editor

What are some of the biggest trends when it comes to mobile printing in retail?
The way we are looking at the mobile market are opportunities that are inside the four walls of an organization and outside the four walls of an organization. 

As you look at both of those paths, I think there are hot opportunities in both of those areas.  Within the four walls, one of the things that we're seeing a lot of growth in is refreshing existing technology that’s already been installed specifically within the retail space.

As Zebra has come out recently with some new technologies, those organizations who have purchased previous generations of Zebra mobile products have seen the benefit that these new technologies can bring to their organizations, with regard to increased efficiencies, speeds of operation, etc. 

The other hot opportunity we see is the whole idea of mobile point of sale. The concept of line busting: you got a line of people a mile long waiting to check out; you can help bring that line down to speed customer processing time, and also you've got workers who are kind of roaming within the retail force space. Whether it's like a big box appliance store where you’re not going to take somebody through the checkout line to purchase a refrigerator or a washer and dryer so you can have that person, the sales person on the store floor, with a mobile device, a handheld device and they can actually process the transaction on the store floor right in front of the washer and dryer that the customer is buying and provide with a receipt with a mobile printer.

Are there any other needs of the retail market that mobile printing is able to solve at this point?
People outside the market often don’t realize how many different labels and tags are in a general retail store.  Most people don't think about it, but you need a printer to print label to go on the shelf.