14 DAY TRIAL // Leica is a world-renowned photography brand that unlike companies such as Fujifilm, Sony, Canon, Nikon and Olympus has chosen to bypass modernity when it comes to designing its products, but has chosen to adopt a more vintage look.
This strategy showcases Leica’s intentions of focusing on quality and preservation of tradition, instead of chasing to embed every single new photographic piece of technology into their offerings.
Anyway, the rumor mill has sprouted an interesting piece of information concerning Leica, which says the photo gear maker is looking to launch a new branded service, in the form of a cloud storage.
You’re probably thinking that, for some reason, Leica is trying to compete with similar services like the Dropbox. But this couldn't be farther from the truth.
Leica is actually looking to launch a niche-service here, which will be targeted at photographers, who wish to expand beyond their physical storage mediums like memory cards and what not.
According to French website 01net, they talked to Leica’s chairman Andreas Kaufmann and he was the one to confirm the company’s upcoming plans.
“Another area of innovation which the company things about is the photos themselves i.e. the files. I’m sure you all here have memory cards, hard drives, online backups Dropbox type and more. But for now it seems to us that all these services are not adapted to the very specific needs of photographers.”
However, Leica recognizes the fact the company might not be ready yet or have enough expertise to make this happen. So, in all probability Leica is going to be taking up a partner to achieve this particular goal.
“One thing is for sure, we will not enter this field without a partner. We are a small business and this is not our core business.”
The company official went out to mention the service would probably be introduced at Photokina. The major photographic event is scheduled to take place between 16 and 21 September 2014 in Cologne, Germany and a lot of major photo manufacturers are expected to make important announcements in the field.
In related news, not so long ago it was revealed Leica partnered up with Swiss watch maker Valbray in order to produce a limited edition timepiece.
The limited edition watch was built around a central concept, which is the iris-style shutter on the dial, which can be opened and closed by twisting the bezel.
Leica is offering 100 pieces of the watch, which will become available in Leica stores and select Valbray dealers.