Kodak to shutter camera business

Follow us

Now, instead of designing its own cameras, Kodak will try to license its brand to other camera makers, several of which have already expressed "significant interest," said spokesman Christopher Veronda.

Kodak, which as recently as 2006 was one of the top three digital camera makers in the world, will stick with its desktop printer business, on which it has focused more recently.

"The printer initiative took over (in the last decade), and they took their eye off the ball in the camera and camcorder space," said IDC analyst Christopher Chute.

However, even in printers, Kodak is far from the top of the pile. It still lags in sixth place in the U.S. market despite being the only brand to grow in the double-digit percentage range in the last two years, according to NPD Group research. The U.S. printer market is led by HP <HPQ.N>, Epson and Canon.

Kodak, which opened for business in 1880, also invented digital cameras with Wi-Fi connections and touch-screens as well as docking stations that made it easy to transfer photos to computers, according to IDC's Chute.

These were among the products that gave Kodak a 10 percent market share in 2006, behind Canon <7751.T> and Sony Corp <6758.T>. By 2010 it had dropped to seventh place behind rivals like Nikon <7731.T> and Samsung Electronics Co <005930.KS>, according to IDC.

But as the quality of digital cameras in cellphones improved, stand-alone cameras' relevance became somewhat limited to the higher-end market, where Kodak did not compete in recent years.

The company will take a charge of about $30 million to leave the business. It expects the exit to generate more than $100 million in annual operating savings.

The charge does not include additional costs that Kodak expects to incur for actions such as ending manufacturing contracts with overseas companies that make its products, Veronda said.