Talk:Polaroid Corporation

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article[edit]

(This refers to my accidentally anonymous edit as 128.12.90.73) I didn't really expand this article - and it could really use some expanding on the history of the company - but I did make the introduction more comprehensive and fixed some sloppy spelling and grammar. A great starting place for a brief history of the company is on the company's own page [1]. As always, it would be a good idea to consult other sources to confirm and expand on what the company chooses to publish in its history.

--Jeff 04:48, 30 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Petters[edit]

We can learn a lot from what Petters puts on its website. Notably, on its Sunbeam page: "Petters Consumer Brands can help you tap into the rich and historic brand equity to help you reach more buyers more often with a brand name they trust." It think this means something like: "We're hanging on to this name for now, but if you'd like to exploit it, we'll be delighted to sell it to you for a hefty profit." -- Hoary 02:21, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC)

What do Polaroid actually *do* nowadays?[edit]

Question; now that the "new" Polaroid Corporation have sold their manufacturing facilities, what do they actually do beyond licensing the Polaroid name to any random company that wants to use it?

The sale of manufacturing facilities in itself isn't why I ask this. Nowadays, countless big names subcontract a lot- if not all- of their manufacturing. I'm not even thinking of shared design, which is common with more generic items, and- the most extreme case- badge engineering. The latter is still being done on behalf of the parent company (though it's only "their" product in the sense that they slap their name on it and sell it).

However (given that cameras were the old Polaroid's core business), their granting of an exclusive three-year license to another company for the manufacture of Polaroid-branded cameras (*) suggests that the new Polaroid's core business is licensing the Polaroid name, and little else.

(*) I assume here that Polaroid themselves have no real involvement in the design, production or sale of the Polaroid-branded cameras produced by the third-party licensee. Ditto the LCD televisions, DVD players, etc.

Fourohfour 12:57, 2 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Additional: Just re-read the article, it states the license is for "digital cameras"; someone else added something, although there is no reference given. Fourohfour 19:36, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Now, nine years after Fourohfour asked the question, I regularly see Polaroid smartphones sold at Blokker. When googling for them, I only stumble upon pages in Dutch (even when asking Google to show pages in English only), so perhaps they're only sold here in NL. Unfortunately, I don't know a particular lot about them other than that they run Android 4.4... PPP (talk) 12:13, 26 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's possible that the company selling Polaroid smartphones has nothing to do with the Polaroid Corporation this article is about. — Lentower (talk) 01:57, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Possible, but I doubt it. The phones carry the same logo and feature an app which one can use to take "Polaroid" pictures (i.e. the photos slide onto the screen, and one needs to shake the phone for the photo to become visible). Also, the phones are featured on the polaroid.com website. I took the liberty of purchasing a polaroid phone yesterday (I needed a new phone anyway, it's not like I bought it just to be able to write something about it, don't worry ;)) and I must say it's a very decent phone, especially for the only €90 euro it's cost me. PPP (talk) 20:29, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@PPP:; Even after the second sale of the name (the "new" Polaroid formed after the bankruptcy itself went bankrupt in 2008), it appears that while Polaroid Mk 3 designs and sells some cameras and accessories in its own right, the brand is still massively licensed to third party distributors.
Many of these licensing agreements appear to be specific to particular regions (see this for an example). In the UK, the ASDA supermarket chain has an exclusive agreement to sell "Polaroid" branded TVs and audiovisual equipment, though as far as I can tell this simply means they can slap the name on generic electronic goods, much like Tesco do with their "Technika" own brand.
Blokker may have a similar regional agreement (since they apparently don't own any stores in the UK, it wouldn't overlap with the ASDA deal). I'm just guessing here.
At any rate- aside from the products designed and distributed by Polaroid themselves- the name appears to indicate little other than the fact that some distributor bought a license to use the Polaroid name on some arbitrarily-sourced products. It's clear that many people are still unaware of this and that the name still has some value in the consumer market, however. Ubcule (talk) 10:48, 25 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

George Wheelwright[edit]

No mention of George Wheelwright? (Mind meal (talk) 02:16, 17 March 2008 (UTC)) 'Bold text' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.23.166.12 (talk) 23:10, 27 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Page needs Work, Out Of Date[edit]

Polaroid has new owners, having been liquidated, the new owners are now licensing out the brand, and one of its factories was apparently sold to the small group that wants to re-start Polaroid film production. This group is apparently legit and includes a bunch of former Polaroid engineers, and a couple enthusiasts; see [2].

The holding company that now owns Polaroid and licensed out PoGo has decided to re-start the manufacture (or license out, it's not clear from the sources I read) of Polaroid film cameras. However, this could simply mean that they've decided to test-run reproduction of their existing top of the line model as a "legacy" model, like Canon and Nikon seem to be doing; someone who knows more about film ought to do some research on this.

They have also licensed out the right to produce and refine the Polaroid film-making process to the aforementioned people who basically bought the factory for $2M before the $130M of equipment inside was going to be liquidated. In other words, the small group of enthusiasts has been given the right to patent their own process for making Polaroid compatible film.

Cites are all on-line but mostly contained in tv news reports and the website for the aforementioned small company... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.15.63.67 (talk) 11:05, 4 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: some pages moved. I moved Polaroid to Polaroid (polarizer) and Polaroid (disambiguation) to Polaroid. While there wasn't any consensus here as to what the primary use of "Polaroid" is, there seems to be agreement that it's not the plastic sheet with the optical properties. Thus, the dab page at the main title is an improvement, even if not the ultimate solution. - GTBacchus(talk) 00:02, 8 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]


Polaroid Corporation → Polaroid — When people type in "Polaroid" on Wikipedia, they're probably more likely searching for information on the company, Polaroid Corporation (the company that makes instant and digital cameras, HDTVs, etc.), than searching for information on the "synthetic plastic sheet used to polarize light". I'd suspect there may very well be some users that don't even know about the polarizer, and are just looking for info on the company. Polaroid is a brand and company name, and that's likely what most people will be looking for. So what I'm proposing here is, since the polarizer seems to be a more minor subject than the company, let's move the Polaroid Corporation article to Polaroid, and move the info on the polarizer in that article to Polaroid (polarizer), or some other suitable title.| Relisting billinghurst sDrewth 16:00, 21 July 2010 (UTC) | [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 01:09, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • This rename doesn't really make sense to me. Why would people more likely be looking for information about the company? When I think Polaroid, I think of the instant cameras. Is there some way to determine the numbers on which is the primary topic? --WikiDonn (talk) 02:22, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Polaroid is the brand of instant cameras. The article about the brand would be the article about the company that owns the brand. This would be what the average reader would likely be looking for, not the polarizer which basically has nothing to do with instant cameras. [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 02:36, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • O.K., well if you ask me, Polaroid should redirect to Instant camera. You still never answered whether there was a way to detect the amount of traffic each page gets, because that would be really helpful. --WikiDonn (talk) 16:26, 10 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Actually, there is a way to view monthly page traffic: click the History tab, then click Page View Statistics. The Polaroid article on the polarizer currently for this month has recieved around double the traffic of the Polaroid Corporation article, however, as I said above, I believe that many readers were probably looking for info on Polaroid as a brand and company, not a polarizer, and that some people may not know anything about a Polaroid "polarizer". The primary topic should get the better page name, see WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 03:14, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Or Polaroid (disambiguation) to Polaroid? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 05:51, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Relisting for consensus. Has anyone reviewed Special:WhatLinksHere/Polaroid to see the spread of general linking is there, and whether it is a confused linking to the article? If there is a broad mix of links for the articles, that may indicate that it may be worthwhile to have the disambiguation page at the base, especially as it then makes it easy to correct the links. billinghurst sDrewth 16:00, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
While Special:WhatLinksHere/Polaroid shows more links than Special:WhatLinksHere/Polaroid Corporation, I see that some of the links that Polaroid is getting are really meant for Polaroid Corporation. I say that moving Polaroid (disambiguation) to Polaroid would be the least we could do (and I agree that it would help with the mixed up links). A product made by a company having the primary article name instead of the company itself? That's whats wrong here. Moving the disambiguation page is not a bad idea actually. [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 23:18, 21 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Polaroid was not the only manufacturer of instant cameras and film. And besides, they made and still make more than just film cameras. Sunglasses, HDTVs, digital cameras and accessories, etc. Polaroid is a company, which is notable enough to have its own article. And again, as I said above: A product made by a company having the primary article name instead of the company itself? That's whats wrong here. [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 00:43, 23 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support move I'm not totally sure what's going on above; it would be easier if people bothered to indent their discussions. But I am wholeheartedly convinced that when people look up "Polaroid" on Wikipedia, they're more likely to be looking for information on the camera or the camera company, than a kind of "synthetic plastic sheet." The camera is simply a much more common usage, at least in the U.S.; maybe in Russia or Argentina they talk about synthetic plastic sheets all the time, I don't know. But the idea that "there may very well be some users that don't even know about the polarizer" seems to be a breathtaking understatement; I'd be amazed if 10% of Americans had any idea what "Polaroid" meant besides a camera. Propaniac (talk) 17:08, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's pretty much what I was trying to say. Oh, about the indenting, this discussion was indented properly originally, but then Anthony Appleyard came along and changed it all into a bulleted list. (don't ask me why he did it, but I agree it's harder to understand. :-) [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 23:16, 30 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose move as proposed above, but I do believe a move is the correct thing to do. When I think of Polaroid I think of an instant camera or of the photograph that comes out of the instant camera. I think the best location for Polaroid is to have it as the DAB page and leave this article where it is. ~~ GB fan ~~ talk 06:47, 7 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Tablet[edit]

What about an electronic tablet? According to Time (jan. 24, 2011, p. 40), "Even Polaroid was showing" a tablet at the International Consumer Electronics Show.

Involvement with other companies[edit]

There is no info about Polaroid's involvement with other companies. For example, PNY has a multi-year licensing agreement to market Polaroid branded memory cards. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.185.82.190 (talk) 05:05, 15 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This article may be slanted towards recent events[edit]

No kidding! There is almost nothing here about the real Polaroid Corporation, and way too much on what happened after the company effectively went out of business. There is far more information about the company at Edwin H. Land than there is here. Kendall-K1 (talk) 17:58, 24 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

@Kendall-K1: You are free to copy that information here, rewording as necessary. — Lentower (talk) 01:58, 28 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

So who the heck owns Polaroid?[edit]

Is it too much to ask that a little simple and fundamental information be included regarding the current company? I'll need to keep looking. 32.214.171.44 (talk) 16:03, 25 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]

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Minnesota[edit]

Another one that says they are Minnesota based. I don't think they would consider themselves such.--WondoMathias (talk) 00:21, 14 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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corporations[edit]

I am not sure about the rules for corporations, but if you buy the "brand and intellectual property" of a company, what else is there? I suppose there is also the physical property, such as production plants. In any case, legally, how does the new Polaroid differ from the old one? Gah4 (talk) 18:59, 10 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Polaroid Revolutionary Worker Movement[edit]

Wikiuser100, you removed a section of sourced content about the PRWM with the edit summary "Relocating", but the content hasn't been moved anywhere else. Where did you intend to move it? Schazjmd (talk) 21:24, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You are correct,. I’m in the middle of editing multiple pages, and indeed got distracted from relocating that to a “Controversy“ heading, where it belongs, before (re-) using the cut-and-paste function and losing it, and that train of thought.

It is absolutely WP:Undue to be in the history section at that length (while that section is completely absent of any content on the explosive growth of Polaroid and its introduction of instant photography).

It is challenging to relocate a large hunk of text like that using a phone, but give me a minute to retrieve it and I’ll put it under a new heading. Thank you for your patience. Wikiuser100 (talk) 21:30, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, just didn't want it to get lost. If I can help at all, just ping me. Schazjmd (talk) 21:31, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Done. Yours, Wikiuser100 (talk) 21:36, 9 April 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Who else thinks this article should be renamed?[edit]

The name 'Polaroid Corporation' does not reflect the article well enough. I would say at least half the content in this article is about things after 2001, when the original company went bust. And since the original company is long gone, it is unlikely info about that would be expanded further from here on. Polaroid since 2001 survives as a brand name with various different products by different owners and companies. This article's current name is long redundant and no longer reflects it. Prqofgoɘg (talk) 23:03, 10 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@Prqofgoɘg: - Disagree. I think you're worrying too much about some well-intentioned but overly rigid and illusory idea of correctness.
My gut reaction is we'd simply end up making things more complicated just to (unsuccessfully) satisfy some minor quibble with the title.
Unless you have a specific proposal of what the new title should be *and* unless it would make things obviously clearer, I'd rather the whole thing was left as-is.
A few thoughts... Note that, in particular:-
  • The immediate successor entity was- AFAICT- also known as Polaroid Corporation
  • We *already* have a separate article for the current brand holders Polaroid B.V. (the company formerly known as The Impossible Project) and future business they're conducting. (If there's a lot about them in the Polaroid Corporation article, that might indicate overlap or content that would be better moved to the BV article).
I mean, you *could* (but IMHO shouldn't) rename the existing Polaroid Corporation to something unwieldy like "History of Polaroid Corporation and its immediate successors", and even then that would normally imply a "parent" article whose history section got long enough to justify splitting off.
And unless one plans on splitting off "Polaroid v2" (2002) and "v3" (2009) into their own "correctly"-titled articles those would have to remain in the main Polaroid Corporation article. (Which is preferable as those short-lived incarnations are better off served in the context of the larger history).
Ubcule (talk) 19:16, 11 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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