Coby ‘Snapps' Into Camcorder Market

By Greg Tarr -- TWICE, 7/9/2009

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Lake Success, N.Y. - Coby Electronics said Wednesday it is jumping into the digital camcorder market with the introduction of three budget-friendly models in the company's new Snapp line.

Designed to go up against the likes of Pure Digital's popular Flip camcorders, Coby's "pocket" camcorders bring an even more aggressive pricing proposition to the market. Each model is priced to sell for less than $100 and will be available at the end of July.

Michael Paladino, Coby's senior product manager, told TWICE that the company has reached a deal to distribute the camcorders through Walmart Canada, as well as many of the company's regular e-commerce partners including J&R Music World It is working on expanding the distribution to other accounts now.

"Our opportunity is in our price points," Paladino said. "Our customer feedback is telling us that there is no one really out there with the product at the price points that we have. With the economy the way it is, we think people are stepping down and being a little more cautious in their spending. A lot of people don't want to spend the money for a Sony or Flip at $150, where you can get two of these for that price."

The highlight of the trio - the CAM5000 SnappHD - will carry a $99 suggested retail and features a 5-megapixel CMOS sensor with 2,584 by 1,936 pixel resolution. It will capture HD videos in MPEG-4 at up to 720p format, with 1,280 by 720 pixel resolution at 30 fps, the company said.

The unit has a bar-style body design and includes 128MB of built-in flash memory and an LED lamp for low-light shooting situations.

Included is a 2-inch LCD viewscreen, a 4x digital zoom, SD/SDHC card slot that is expandable up to 8GB, an integrated USB port and removable/rechargeable lithium-ion battery with two hours of battery life.

For those really tight on cash, Coby's entry Snapp model - the CAM3000 mini digital camcorder - will carry a $40 suggested retail.

It also features a bar-style body and includes a 1.5-inch TFT LCD view screen.

A 1.3-megapixel CMOS sensor (1,280 by 960) will capture video in AVI format at standard definition VGA (640 by 480) resolution.

Included is an LED for low-light shooting situations, a 4x digital zoom, 32MB of built-in flash memory, SD/SDHC card slot expandable up to 8GB and a USB 2.0 port. It is powered by four AAA batteries (included) that will provide more than four hours of battery life.

The step-up model CAM4000 will carry a $60 suggested retail and includes a vertical grip design with a flip-out 2.4-inch LCD view screen, a 3-megapixel CMOS sensor (2,000 by 1,504) that will capture video in AVI format at VGA (640 by 480) standard-definition levels. A photo flash is added for still images shooting in low light.

Also included is a 4x digital zoom, 32MB built-in memory, SD/SDHC card slot expandable up to 8GB and a USB 2.0 port. It is powered by three AAA batteries (included) with more than 1.5 hours of battery life.

Arcsoft Media Impression for editing and uploading video to YouTube is included in all three models.