A Shame.

I still use a Kodak point and shoot digital camera. It has an optical viewfinder that works better than a screen in bright sunlight, and came with twice the internal memory of the competing brands' offerings in the same price range. Tough too. The only way I know they can be killed is by running them over with a car.

Kodak pioneered color photography, and invented a dye-based grainless slide film that made images that can be enlarged up to the limits of the enlarger without noticeable loss of resolution possible.

The end of an era indeed.

Throwing losers overboard

Kodak never made a profitable dime in the digital consumer electronics area. Nothing. Its only digital profit came from the professional products, like packaging. Kodak sold its profitable professional image sensor fabrication plant last year for cash.

As for licensing, brands don't mean anything. The "Carl Zeiss" optics in a Nokia are designed by Carl Zeiss Optics. Kodak never developed a consumer brand for lenses, just bottom-grade consumer cameras and fabulous film. How many Kodak brand sensors are in cameras? Plenty, but would you ever know it? The Pentax 645D 40Mp camera has a Kodak sensor, but you'd never know it from looking at the box.

licensing

Kodak should have licenced the brand to mobile phone manufacturers years ago much like how Sony Ericsson uses the Cybershot brand and Nokia has Carl Zeiss optics.