Polaroid Saw Stronger Holiday Sales Than The Prior Year, It Says

Polaroid also had “brisk” sales of its new $299.99 Z340 digital camera featuring an integrated printer using Zink Zero Ink Printing Technology from Zink Imaging that prints 3x4-inch photos, Pollock said. A limited number of retailers, including Bloomingdale’s, Home Shopping Network and northeast photo chains such as Adorama and B&H, had the camera for the holiday season because Polaroid had only “limited” supplies, Pollock said. “Distribution is widening now” that the company has more supplies, he said.

New products that Polaroid bowed at CES included the 16-megapixel SC1630 Android Smart Camera that Pollock said will ship “sometime in the second half of 2012” at pricing to be determined but in the “high-end point and shoot” camera price range. The company had been “looking for ways to participate in the mobile market,” he said. It’s “working on optional data plans” with carriers yet to be named, he said. Polaroid hadn’t exhibited at the annual Photo Marketing Association (PMA) show in about five years because it’s been “spending more time and effort on consumer electronics” products including TVs, he said. Most buyers are at CES anyway, where it typically exhibits, he said. That PMA was consolidated into CES was “a good thing,” he said. But Polaroid didn’t exhibit at the PMA@CES exhibit area at the Venetian/Sands exhibition area last week because he said it didn’t make sense to have two separate booths at CES.

Also entering new product categories at CES was camcorder company DXG, with lines of LED pico projectors, audio docking systems for smartphones, and IP video cameras. “We needed to broaden what we do in order to survive” and “keep growing our company,” Paul Goldberg, senior vice president of sales and marketing, told us at CES. He pointed to the declining volumes being seen in the camcorder market.

In projectors, DXG will ship three DLP models -- the $199.99 PSP-030, $399.99 PSP-100 and $449.99 PSP-200 -- in March, Goldberg said. It will then field five IP cameras, priced $119.99-$299.99, in April. Three audio docking systems will ship in March or April, including an entry-level model for Android smartphones at $99.99 and an iPhone SKU at $129.99. A step-up model with superior audio output will cost $119.99 for Android and $149.99 for iPhones, while the high-end model with stepped-up audio output of 60 watts per channel will be $129.99 for Android and $169.99 for iPhones, Goldberg said. Three combination audio docking and IP camera systems will ship in April at $199.99, $279.99 and $399.99, with the top-of-the-line IVC-430 offering HD resolution. “Before the end of the year,” DXG will probably add tablet support to its docking system line, Goldberg said.

DXG hadn’t taken part in PMA for a few years, but considered exhibiting at PMA@CES in addition to the Las Vegas Convention Center’s South Hall last week, Goldberg said. He said the company opted against the PMA@CES booth to avoid having to run “from one place to the other for meetings,” he said. With the new product lines, it made no sense to only have a booth at PMA@CES this year or in 2013, he said.

With the camcorder market “shrinking,” DXG is trying to focus on offering models with “functionality” that consumers “can not get from their smartphones,” Goldberg said, referring to the effort as “survival mode.” The company shipped the $299.99 DXG-5F9 1080p 3D and 2D camcorder last month in “limited supplies” and “everything sold through so far,” he said. “Another shipment came in and now we're going to expand the distribution on the product,” he said, projecting the model will be available at all its accounts within the next month or so. A pocket version with the same features will follow at the same price in April, he said.

DXG’s revamped line of Pro Gear camcorders feature Optical Image Stabilization built into the lenses, Goldberg said. The new line includes the top-of-the-line DXG-5K1 shipping in early February, $249.99 DXG-B01 in February and $149.99 DXG-5H3 following in April. The company will also add three new color SKUs -- orange, yellow and red -- for its DXG-5B1V Sportster camcorder that shipped in July at $149.99. That model did “extremely well” for DXG, Goldberg said. Its new Luxe line of camcorders targeted at women will get a new model, the DXG-5J0 at $129.99 in March or April, while a DXG-5H5 QuickShots camcorder will ship in the same time frame at the same price.

Kodak chose not to exhibit at the PMA@CES exhibit area at CES last week because it already had space booked for the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center when plans for PMA@CES were finalized, Therese Corrigan-Bastuk, director of worldwide marketing, told us. The company had planned to exhibit at the PMA show that was scheduled for September in Las Vegas under the new CliQ name, she said. But the PMA scrapped plans for the September show and decided to merge its annual show into CES as PMA@CES, with exhibit space at the Venetian/Sands convention area. Kodak was approached to exhibit there, but it already had CES space booked, as usual, she said. It’s “kind of unrealistic these days to have two booths” at the same show, she said. Unlike most other camera makers, however, she said Kodak had a banner at the Venetian directing visitors to see its booth at the Las Vegas Convention Center, and that “worked out really well,” she said. It’s too early to say what Kodak will do next year at CES, she said last week, before Kodak filed for bankruptcy. (See the separate report in this issue.) She stressed that Kodak has “been a tremendous supporter” of PMA, even when it moved to Anaheim, Calif., from Las Vegas for 2010. It’s “always been a good show for us,” she said. PMA attendance and exhibitor support among the camera makers, however, has declined in recent years. Pentax, with parent Ricoh, was the only major camera maker that exhibited at PMA@CES (CED Jan 11 p7).

New products that Kodak bowed at CES included the 16-megapixel EasyShare Wireless Camera M750, shipping this spring at $169.95 in silver, teal blue and red SKUs. It will arrive in March or April, “depending on retail reset” schedules, said Hal McLenon, product manager of wireless cameras. Features include a 3-inch capacitive touch screen, a Retinar HD 5x zoom lens and a dedicated video record button that Kodak said enables users to “shoot in HD video on the fly,” then backup the images and video to one’s home computer. The images can also be copied to any compatible mobile Wi-Fi device, it said.

Olympus didn’t have a booth anywhere at CES this year, opting instead to show its products one-on-one in a meeting room at the Las Vegas Convention Center. It decided a booth wasn’t necessary at CES, whether on the main show floor or at PMA@CES, said Product Manager Sally Clemens. Olympus hasn’t had a booth at CES in a while, but she said this was the first time that it didn’t exhibit at PMA. One reason for the declining PMA attendance of recent years was the decreasing number of mom and pop camera retailers, said Ray Acevedo, Olympus technical representative for the western U.S.

Products that Olympus bowed at CES included six new audio recorders shipping in March at $34.99-$129.99 and five new cameras at $99.99-$199.99. It also touted the $399.99 LS-100 top-of-the-line field recorder that it announced last month and will ship in February, Acevedo said. The $199.99, 16-megapixel SP-620UZ long zoom camera ships this month and features a 21x optical zoom lens, 3-inch LCD and 3D image capture that allows two photos of the same subject to be captured from different angles to generate 3D images that can be viewed on a 3D-compatible monitor or TV, Olympus said. The other new cameras are the $199.99, 14-megapixel SZ-12 with 3D mode (March); the $179.99, 14-megapixel TG-320 (February) that’s waterproof, shockproof, freezeproof and dustproof; the $149.99 , 16-megapixel VR340 with 10x optical zoom (March) featuring a new Beauty Make Up mode in which up to 18 effects can be added to a face including lipstick and whiter teeth; and the entry-level, 14-megapixel VG160 (February), Acevedo said.