September 30, 2006
Kodak Zooms in on Cameraphones
Don't be surprised to see the Kodak brand name appear on more mobile phones than cameras in the not-too-distant future, reports DigitMag.
"The U.S. imaging icon aims to put as much of its technology as possible inside what it expects to become the dominant consumer picture-taking device -- the camera phone, according to a senior executive from Kodak.
"The compact digital camera is a short-term phenomena; it's going to be eclipsed by the camera phone," Fred Seibl, general manager Kodak in Stuttgart, said Wednesday in an interview on the sidelines of the Photokina imaging show in Cologne. "We would like to see a lot of our technology in those phones, and we are already taking steps to achieve that goal."
Seibl pointed to the deal Kodak struck in January with mobile-phone maker Motorola to collaborate in the area of mobile imaging.
That deal, which is nonexclusive, is to be followed by others, according to Seibl. "We're speaking with other handset manufacturers," he said, but declined to mention any names.
In addition to handset manufacturers, Kodak is targeting mobile-phone operators for its online service EasyShare Gallery, which allows customers to upload, organize and store multimedia content from their mobile phones or the Internet, as well as share and print images taken with their camera phones. The company is already partnering with T-Mobile in Germany to provide the service."
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