As HP moves to position their TouchPad tablet into the marketplace with wireless printing, they are also seeing that a tablet’s ability to view and edit documents easily is making the demand for printing material drop pretty rapidly. And a Morgan Stanley study reflects that with the expectation that printer supplies revenue will drop by as much as 5 percent annually by 2012. That’s certainly good news for the environment and bad news for printer companies.

“As the installed base of tablets–a digital document viewer that reduces the need to print both standard black and white documents and expensive color presentations–grows, we expect printed page volumes to shrink. What’’s more, 90% of iPad users already believe they would print less with access to work documents on their tablets.”

With an impact on both commercial and corporate markets, it’s clear that tablets may cause companies like HP to rethink their core business models and it explains at least partially why the company is going all in when it comes to tablet design.

[via All Things Digital]