Polaroid Takes On New Camera Licensees

By Greg Tarr On Jan 30 2012 - 6:01am

LAS VEGAS — International CES proved to be an interesting venue in the evolution and growth of the vaunted Polaroid brand within the imaging industry.

Although the show didn’t offer up any announcements about or visits from Lady Gaga as it did the past two years, this year’s show introduced a new Polaroid-branded “smart camera” along with some new licensees handling different aspects of the famous trademark for cameras in the U.S. and other territories.

For clarification, the PLR IP Holdings LLC (owned by Gordon Bros. Brands, Hilco Consumer Capital and Knight Bridge Capital Partners) has licensed the Polaroid brand to C&A for use on anything related to instant cameras including cameras, film and new instant digital technologies, including Zero Ink (Z-ink) products.

That license extends to those areas “pretty much around the world,” explained Scott Hardy, PLR IP Holdings CEO.

C&A also markets lines of photo accessories under the trademark.

At CES, another Polaroid camera licensee, called AMW, was introduced. AMW is the brand’s largest licensee for a wide range of products in Latin American territories.

Hardy said AMW has the right to use its license to the Polaroid brand in the U.S. on Android-based smart cameras, including the just-introduced model SC1630.

“The product is just so unique in that it is a connectivity product,” Hardy said, explaining AMW’s U.S. market niche for the brand. “It’s Android based, and that would be the key distinctive feature as a connected camera.”

The camera is billed as the first Android-based camera combining a 3G-ready Android smart-connect platform with an advanced digital point-and-shoot.

Due to ship in the second quarter at a price to be announced, the smart-connect camera measures 111.9mm high, 56.9mm wide and 15.5mm deep and weighs 140 grams with the battery. It is based on the Android 2.3.4 or above platform, and is listed as supporting the WCDMA/ GSM/HSDPA/HSUPA (3G) cell services and Wi-Fi.

Listed specs would be compatible with AT&T and T-Mobile services, but no carrier deals have yet been announced.

The device features a 3.2-inch (800 by 400 resolution) capacitive touchscreen LCD. Like most Android phones, there are built-in Bluetooth and GPS features. It also includes FM radio tuning.

The SC1630 features 16-megapixel still resolution and will store images and multimedia files to 512MB of internal RAM/ROM. It adds an expansion slot for MicroSD memory cards (up to 32GB).

Features include a hot key for image/video uploading to device albums and online-photo albums through Facebook, Flickr, Picasa and YouTube. There are also such photo-editing tools as a cross filter (starburst), adaptive lighting, digital filter, brightness filter, red-eye compensation, frame composition, and in-camera cropping, resizing and rotating.

The phone will also support other multimedia file formats, including MP3, AAC, HEAAC, WMA, MP4 and 3GP.

Just before CES, PLR IP Holdings also announced that it had reached a deal with camera vendor Sakar International, which now markets cameras in the U.S. under the Vivitar brand among other trademarks, to market Polaroid-branded digital still and video cameras.

Sakar is a major supplier of value-driven cameras and camcorders to Walmart and photo/CE accounts and discount chains.

“Sakar is our exclusive licensee for digital still cameras and digital video cameras in the Americas,” Hardy explained.

“The Polaroid brand is among the most recognizable in the world, and this agreement gives us an opportunity to leverage that brand recognition to develop digital cameras and digital high-definition camcorders with unique feature sets,” stated Jeff Saka, Sakar president.

Hardy added that while AMW has the right to a specific niche of Android connected cameras in the U.S., Sakar International would not be precluded from introducing a camera connected by other means, such as Wi-Fi.

Hardy also pointed out that it would not be unusual for different licensees to also team up on product development and marketing for certain technologies.