Kodak is exiting the digital camera business and it will instead license its brand name to other camera manufacturers

NEW YORK - Kodak is departure the digital camera business and it will instead authorization their cast names to added camera manufacturers, the aggregation appear Thursday.

Kodak will "phase out its committed abduction accessories business" -- which includes agenda cameras, abridged video cameras and agenda account frames -- in the aboriginal bisected of 2012. The company's customer business will instead focus alone on photo printing, through retail and online casework as able-bodied as desktop inkjet devices.

Once the digital camera phase-out is complete, Kodak expects an anniversary operating accumulation of added than $100 million. The advertisement comes aloof weeks afterwards Kodak showed off six new cameras at the Customer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Kodak chock-full affairs acceptable blur cameras in 2004. It still sells disposable cameras.

Eastman Kodak banal (EKDKQ), which trades on the blush bedding afterward its Chapter 11 filing, rose 3.3% to about 44 cents in morning trading.

A blur icon's decline: Kodak has struggled to accumulate up with agenda technology, and the company's sales and banal amount accept reflected those problems.

Sales diminished about in bisected from 2005 to 2010, and profits broiled up. Kodak was delisted from the S&P 500 in December 2010.

In July 2011, Kodak said it was exploring the auction of added than 1,100 patents, or 10% of the company's apparent portfolio. In September of that year, Kodak broke $160 actor from a above-mentioned $400 actor acclaim band - a move that prompted Moody's to decline the company's debt securities, blame them added into clutter territory. Bankruptcy rumors began bouncing two canicule later.

Kodak is now cyber banking on its "strong position in the claimed imaging market," as Thursday's columnist absolution put it. Meanwhile, Kodak will abide to account all agenda camera artifact warranties and accommodate abstruse abutment and service.