Kodak eyes camera phone integration; compact digital cameras "short term phenomena"

Will there be a "Kodak Inside" sticker on a camera phone?  That's the implication if you read comments by Fred Seibl, general manager of Kodak at Stuttgart in an interview during the Photokina camera show in Cologne, according to an article in Digit.

Seibl says, "The compact digital camera is a short-term phenomena; it's going to be eclipsed by the camera phone.  We would like to see a lot of our technology in those phones, and we are already taking steps to achieve that goal."

Kodal already struck a non-exclusive deal with Motorola to collaborate on camera phones where the camera company supplies its CMOS sensors and additional components to the wireless handset vendor, says Digit.

Joint branding

Kodak isn't going to develop its own camera phones, Seibl says, but that's certainly not a surprise.  Kodak isn't a cellular phone manufacturing expert.

But I've been suggesting for years that we should see camera manufacturers team with handset vendors to offer jointly branded phones.  Certain Sony Ericsson camera phones promote the Sony Cyber-shot brand.

Nokia prints "Carl Zeiss Optics" near the lens of camera phones in which that venerable lens maker supplies the optics.

Other conversations

Kodak is talking with other handset vendors, Seibl says, and the article suggests Nokia would be a prime candidate for a deal since the two companies already colloborate on photo storage and printing (and here).

Kodak, that purchased Ofoto's photo album/printing service more than five years ago, offers its EasyShare Gallery to cellular operators to brand as well as selling the service directly to consumers.  I see that Kodak now enables consumers to use the service for free, kind of, without paying a $2.99 per month fee, if consumers purchase at least one item from the Gallery (printing photos, for example) within 12 months.

Kodak EasyShare Gallery members also may upload videos of a maximum of 15MB per video and a video total storage of 150 MB -- for 30 days, after which time Kodak may remove the videos.