Smartphone could be Kodak’s next big moment,
Profitable again, film pioneer thinks it can fill a niche in the market
Quick, NEW YORK what’s the first thing you think of when you think of “Kodak”? “Film,” “photography,” “pictures,” “cameras” are obvious choices, and if you’re thinking more negatively, perhaps even “bankruptcy” will leap to mind.
What you probably didn’t come up with was “smartphone.”
Yet Eastman Kodak, in partnership with Britain’s Bullitt Group, has launched the Kodak Ektra in the U.S., an unlocked $399.99 American-version of an Android-based “camera-first” smartphone that initially began shipping to European consumers last year and was showcased at the CES trade show in January.
Not surprisingly, Kodak is playing up the features in Ektra that speak photography, but while many of the pictures I took during my brief tests were quite decent, I can’t say I was blown away or Kodak was leaps and bounds ahead of the best camera phones out there. To be fair, I didn’t dig into all the manual shooting options, which include the ability to change the ISO, white balance, shutter speed and so on.
The Ektra certainly looks the part. It has a protruding 21-megapixel/f 2.0 aperture lens covered by glass, a 13-MP front-facing lens, dual LED flash, dual press dedicated shutter button, and yes, a wrist strap.
You can switch among various scene modes (sport, HDR, macro, panorama, etc.) using a virtual thumb dial that is also meant to evoke the past. But the software interface is a little bit clunky.
It has a 5-inch Full HD touch display, and it comes with 32GB of memory, expandable via microSD, along with 3GB of RAM. It runs the older Marshmallow flavor of Android.
These days, Kodak CEO Jeff Clarke insists “the Kodak comeback is well along.” Kodak is a public company with revenues last year of $1.5 billion. It is focused on advanced materials, film, printing, software and, as evidenced by the release of the Ektra, consumer products.
Kodak has been profitable for four consecutive quarters. It’s stock closed Wednesday at $9.85, down 21% in the past year.