Kodak Cameras Come Back to Life

The company is in bankruptcy, but it licensed its brand name to consumer electronics maker JK Imaging.

By Kim Peterson

Kodak (EDKDQ) may be bankrupt, but its cameras are coming back from the dead.

The company has agreed to license its name to JK Imaging, a personal electronics company in Los Angeles. Executives there plan to unveil the new Kodak camera sometime between April and June.

Eventually, we may see the Kodak name on other devices as well, such as pocket video cameras and portable projectors, USA Today reports.

Friday, a judge approved Kodak's plan to sell some of its digital-imaging patents to a number of technology companies, including Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG). (Microsoft owns and publishes moneyNOW, an MSN Money site.) The sale, for $527 million, is much less than the $2 billion Kodak originally thought it could get, according to Dow Jones newswires.

The sale should still satisfy Kodak's bondholders, who loaned the company $830 million on the condition that the patents would sell for at least $500 million.

Kodak has turned its world upside-down since filing for bankruptcy last January. It's trying to survive and emerge from bankruptcy, and in the process has sold off its consumer-printer segment and other businesses. It's still trying to sell its photo kiosk, scanning and film businesses, Dow Jones reports.

The company has struggled to make high-quality digital cameras over the years. "The last few generations of Kodak cameras ranged from mediocre to awful, leaving a once-proud company's reputation in tatters as they staggered into the digital age," writes the website DigitalCameraInfo. But the cameras could still be a hit, some observers say, especially with older consumers who remember the days when Kodak was a giant in the film industry.

"There were a lot of facets to the Kodak brand that made people choose it specifically, because it was Kodak," branding specialist and author Rob Frankel told USA Today. "Every generation grew up knowing Kodak. Because it's a legacy, multigenerational brand, the older the consumer the better it's going to do."

Source: Msn