Kodak Backs Out of Camera Market

As part of its effort to be reborn as a company, Kodak has announced the decision to gradually stop offering digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames.

Basically, the company is phasing out what used to be a major part of its global business, which means that it will focus on desktop inkjet printers and photo printing (online and retail-based).

Kodak plans to completely stop selling dedicated capture devices, as it calls them, by the end of the first half of this year (2012).

After that, it will only try to find new licenses in this category and generally expand its brand licensing program.

As soon as these newer changes are complete, it hopes to make savings of about $100 million a year.

“For some time, Kodak’s strategy has been to improve margins in the capture device business by narrowing our participation in terms of product portfolio, geographies and retail outlets,” said Pradeep Jotwani, president, consumer businesses, and Kodak chief marketing officer.

“Today’s announcement is the logical extension of that process, given our analysis of the industry trends.”

The consumer products and services that will live on, in addition to printers, are retail-based photo kiosks, digital dry lab systems, apps for Facebook, the Kodak Gallery (an online digital photo products service), camera accessories, batteries and, finally, traditional film and photographics paper.

Retail partners have already been contacted in regards to the transition and Kodak will, of course, honor all related product warranties.

Finally, it will keep offering technical support for whatever cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames it has already sold.

For those who want to know more about Kodak's dire straits, the consumer electronics company filed for bankruptcy around the middle of January, 2012 (last month) and sued Samsung over the Galaxy Tab soon after.