Sony Developing Touch-Screen Printer Similar to Microsoft Surface

A new patent application (20090022510) from Sony reveals the company has plans to develop a touch-screen based printer much like Microsoft Surface. With Microsoft Surface, you simply place your digital camera on the touch-screen surface, and then it is able to automatically download the photos and display them on the touch-screen. Sony essentially wants to do just this for its own printer where you can put your camera on the display surface where the photos are then automatically downloaded to the Sony printer, which then lets you browse the photos on the touch-screen and simply choose which photos to print. Very interesting feature, it will be fun to see if their product infringes on any Microsoft patents here.

Now, if this Sony product ever makes it to market, we can expect it to be very aggressively priced. I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft incorporated a basic print technology in its own Surface products. In fact, I think incorporating this would be very useful and add a lot more value as people would be able to easily print and share photos with friends from their living room or wherever they have their Microsoft Surface table setup.