Olivetti resurfaces with new printers

Olivetti, once a household name in Europe for typewriters, later printers, and computers, is being relaunched by Telecom Italia as the brand name of the Italian telecommunication group's new business and consumer IT product unit.

Telecom Italia will invest €200 million ($241 million) in the relaunch, which will initially focus on developing a new consumer line of inkjet printers, the Italian telco said Wednesday in a statement.

The printers, according to Telecom Italia, are being designed by several well-known designers and will feature "instantly understandable interfaces" and universally known icons to ensure ease of use.

Any-Way is a multifunctional printer designed by well-known industrial designers James Irvine and Alberto Meda. It will be available in four different models from September 2005. Wireless features, such as short-range Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, will be available in the top models.

My-Way, a portable photo printer designed by the design company IDEO in Palo Alto, California, will also be available in September.

Jasper Morrison, another well-known international designer, plans to join the team next year.

Olivetti can look back at a long and often turbulent history. Founded as a typewriter manufacturer in Ivrea near Turin, Italy, in 1908 by Camillo Olivetti, the company later expanded into printers, computers and, finally, telecommunications in the early days of the Internet.

The Italian manufacturer was a key investor in the launch of the Italian mobile phone company Omnitel and fixed-network operator Infostrada, which both competed against incumbent Telecom Italia. It later sold its stakes in these two companies to take a controlling interest in Telecom Italia.

When the Internet bubble burst at the turn of the century, Olivetti saw its ownership changes hands a few times. Finally, in 2003, Telecom Italia was merged fully into Olivetti, which agreed to change its name to Telecom Italia.