Customers want to print from their mobile devices. Unfortunately, today's methods to print are frequently too complicated for the user, offer limited business IT support, and are difficult for mobile device manufacturers and software application developers to adopt. Driving a single standard solves these problems and creates a baseline experience that allows for new innovation at the intersection of mobile and printing devices.

The Mopria Print Standard is designed to help make printing from smart phones, tablets and mobile devices even simpler than traditional PC-based printing. All participating manufacturers will adhere to a single printing standard. The Mopria mark will immediately communicate to all end-users that they can instantly and easily wirelessly print from their mobile devices to identified printers without additional set up procedures.

The Mopria Alliance owns some elements and influences other components referenced in the Alliance technology standards. The Alliance defines the customer use cases and the technology requirements; then reviews existing standards to meet these requirements. Our initial selection of technologies includes standards from the Wi-Fi Alliance, The Printer Working Group, NFC Forum and additional standards bodies. Mopria Alliance members participate on these technology standards organizations and support Mopria-specific implementation requirements regarding mobile and print device interoperability.

The Mopria Alliance then influences mobile & printer manufacturers, OS and software providers to adopt the Mopria-defined customer use cases and technology outcomes utilizing technologies from existing standards organizations.

As the Mopria Alliance expands customer use cases, we may create new technologies and establish new standards as needed.

The shift to working on tablets and smartphones, and growth in data accessed from mobile devices is driving new processes and the need for more efficient mobile printing solutions. According to InfoTrends, 95% of consumers and 67% of business users desire to print from their mobile devices.

InfoTrends: "Mobile Devices and the Impact on Print”, John Shane, January 2015

Software application developers do not need to join the Mopria Alliance to benefit from or use the standards. Currently, the Mopria Alliance encourages the use of Google's Application Programming Interface (API) to deploy print in Android applications while the Alliance works with handset providers and print manufacturers to complete the print experience through membership and certification of hardware compliant with the Mopria standards. Software application developers are welcome to join the Alliance if they would like to participate and influence the technology selections.

At launch in 2013, Mopria provided an API and SDK for Android 4.3 (Jelly Bean) which has been replaced by the Google API for Android 4.4 with the platform for print embedded in the Operating System.

The Mopria Alliance formally launched its certification processes for mobile devices, printers and accessories in February 2014. The Mopria Alliance conducts regular certification testing events and many of the companies in the Alliance received Mopria certification. See http://mopria.org/KnowledgeCenter/SupportedProducts.aspx for the latest list of certified products.

Mopria Alliance members are actively testing to certify new and existing printers in the market. See http://mopria.org/KnowledgeCenter/SupportedProducts.aspx for the latest list of certified products.

Mopria Alliance members include the following printer and print accessory manufacturers: Brother, Canon, Fuji Xerox, HP, Konica Minolta, Kyocera, Lenovo, Lexmark, Marvell, Oki Data Corporation, Pantum, Ricoh, Samsung, Seiko Epson, and Xerox.

Currently Mopria does not have a certification program for app developers. We are looking into establishing certification processes for applications to take advantage of the advanced features to come in the Mopria Print Service overtime.

Currently Mopria does not have any test tools to provide app developers, but app developers may request support from Mopria to evaluate their implementation of the print feature. Contact Mopria at help@mopria.org.

The initial set of standards is aimed at Android devices (which covers a large portion of the smart handset market). The Mopria Alliance intends to expand our impact to additional Operating Systems overtime to achieve our user experience goals.

Mopria Alliance technical specifications are based on industry standards.The initial version of Mopria Alliance technical specifications use Wi-Fi technologies, including Wi-Fi Infrastructure and Wi-Fi Direct.

Traditional Wi-Fi infrastructure allows all printers connected to the Mopria-certified mobile devices to be discovered by the mobile devices; this includes printers connected to wireless routers via Ethernet. Once discovered, standard Wi-Fi technologies are used to connect to the printer. Additionally, Wi-Fi Direct allows Mopria certified mobile devices to connect directly to printers via a peer-to-peer connection avoiding the need to connect through a traditional Wi-Fi router.

NFC technology makes life easier and more convenient for consumers worldwide by making it simpler to make transactions, exchange digital content, and connect electronic devices with a touch. A standards-based connectivity technology, NFC harmonizes today's diverse contactless technologies, enabling current and future solutions in areas such as access control, consumer electronics, healthcare, information collection and exchange, loyalty and coupons, payments, and transport. NFC is a connection hand-over specification. NFC establishes a framework for structuring information so that a "touch" establishes a NFC radio connection for the printer to indicate which wireless technology it can accept so a secondary connection can be made. The handover includes security credentials. NFC makes the Wi-Fi Direct connection, and then communicates to the mobile device what you can do - print, get an app, etc. This is considered tap-to-connect or tap-to-select.

When tap-to-print is enabled the user can "tap" the printer while printable content is viewed on the mobile screen, the tap action will initiate the print job as follows: The connection is established with the printer, and the document or photo is prepared for printing. During this 2-3 second period of connection and rendering, the Print System brings up the cancel/settings dialog. If cancel or settings are not selected, the print will then be sent to the printer. The tap initiates the print.

The standard includes User Experience (UX) Guidelines that define minimum requirements - i.e., to keep user interfaces simple, consistent and intuitive across devices and applications. The Print user interface consists of a list of printers available, a Print button provided upon printer selection, and a minimum set of Print options, and is designed to be in sync with the mobile user's life style.

The Page Description Languages (PDLs) currently supported by Mopria Alliance include: PDF (from Adobe), PCL-m (from the Wi-Fi Alliance) and PWG Raster (from the Printer Working Group standards body). Printer manufacturers must support one of these PDLs to be compliant with the current Mopria Alliance standard.

The Mopria Alliance intends to support a number of file formats to meet the range of document types customers expect to print as they shift their computing and printing from PCs to mobile devices.

Yes, it is possible for the users to utilize the core set of print settings: Mono/Color/Quality, Duplex, Paper Size, Orientation etc. Stapling is a selection option under consideration for a future release of the Mopria standards.

Yes, please review the Using Mopria section on the Mopria Alliance website.

Android 4.4 includes native platform support for printing, along with APIs for managing printing and adding new types of printer support. The platform provides a print manager that mediates between apps requesting printing and installed print services that handle print requests. The print manager provides shared services and a system UI for printing, giving users consistent control over printing from any app. The print manager also ensures the security of content as it's passed across processes, from an app to a print service (such as the Mopria Print Service).

Android apps can now print any type of content over Wi-Fi or cloud-hosted services such as Google Cloud Print. In print-enabled apps, users can discover available printers, change paper sizes, choose specific pages to print, and print almost any kind of document, image, or file. For more information, go to: http://developer.android.com/about/versions/kitkat.html#44-printing

With the breadth of members and technological prowess, the Mopria Alliance is well positioned to complement and innovate on top of the basic print feature deployed in the Android OS. Initially, the Mopria Print Service provides print from Android 4.4-based mobile devices to Mopria-certified printers from a wide range of manufacturers. The Mopria Print Service also supports an additional connection method with peer-to-peer Wi-Fi Direct printing which is above and beyond the core functionality of KitKat. Over time, the Mopria Alliance will deliver more innovations supporting a range of customer use cases.

The technologies and corresponding execution standards will ensure that a customer who uses a mobile device with the technology can easily print to any brand Mopria-certified printer without additional print service plug-ins. The technologies create the interoperability between brands of mobile and print devices.
The value of the Mopria Alliance is that the standard we are advancing has consensus support from major technology companies, and interest from many more - including smaller vendors - representing the opportunity for a true ecosystem of interoperability.