It's cake-and-eat-it time. HP wants to get out of the digital camera business without giving up on the brand. It's keen to hear from any manufacturer who fancies making cameras and slapping the HP logo on them for a fee.

HP said it will take a $30m hit during its fourth quarter to cover the move, which it hopes to have made by July 2008, though it only committed itself to selling its own HP cameras "though the holiday season".

HP wants to focus its imaging resources on its Print 2.0 strategy, which is all about improving printing speeds and making it easier to print from websites - though we'd say the latter has more to do with Internet Explorer and co. than HP.

The company also hopes the move will allow it to sell more photo-printers into the home.

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