CoolSign/Haivision announcing Kodak deal next week

January 29, 2011 by Dave Haynes

A deal with Kodak that’s been done for a buncha weeks and chattered about quietly around Haivision and its recently-acquired CoolSign unit gets announced next week.

In a nutshell (as was whispered across the pond by DailyDOOH), the deal sees a a couple of Kodak’s networked digital picture frames driven by CoolSign’s enterprise-grade software. The signs will do a fraction of what a normal PC/screen package would do, but these are meant for store counters and shelf-edges for now and don’t need to do a whole lot.

The first iterations of this product are very much consumer-grade (ie something less than bulletproof), but that will likely evolve over time. To really work in retail, they have to be designed to deal with all those prying fingers and banging shopping carts.

It’s a great, high-profile deal for Haivision, giving them a huge distribution channel and association with a globally respected and connected brand. Kodak equaled quality for decades, and even though the end of consumer film has been a big hit for them, the brand equity is still there.

It’s also a nice way for Kodak to enter the DS space.

Digital photo frames have been looked at as potential digital signage platforms for many, many years. A company called Ceiva had the puppies networked more than 10 years ago and I know a company that (I am not making this up) was using that software to run ad screens in hand dryers in Montreal.

Companies like FrameChannel (lately with Scala) have also looked at the opportunity presented by low-cost, high volume networked screens.