22 October 2008

Kodak and Nokia Join Hands!
What Does It Mean for Us?

Eastman Kodak Company today announced that it entered into a patent license agreement earlier this month with Nokia Corporation that will allow each company access to the other’s intellectual property portfolio.

The license agreement, which provides significant benefits to both companies, is royalty bearing to Kodak. Additional financial terms were not disclosed.

"We are pleased to have reached a mutually beneficial arrangement that advances the interests of Kodak and Nokia and validates the strength of Kodak’s intellectual property portfolio," said Laura G. Quatela, Chief Intellectual Property Officer, and Vice President, Kodak Company. "We look forward to continued collaboration with Nokia."

Well, the first question that came to my mind while reading was, "What does Kodak want from Nokia and what Nokia want to do get from Kodak?" There could be a thousand reasons why Nokia want a closer cooperation with Kodak! Kodak has many technologies that Nokia will find useful to use on its phones and other products in the future so I am not surprised at all.

Another thing to consider is, how dose this impact a 10-year global product, cross licensing and marketing alliance between Motorola and the Kodak Company announced more than a year ago!? How Motorola will act in this situation?!

Another question to ponder is "what does it mean for us", for end users of Nokia products!? Is it an important collaboration? Does this means that we’ll finally get a imaging phone that will be capable to compete to midrange digital point and shoot cameras!?

Long time ago Nokia and Carl Zeiss, one of the most respected companies in the camera industry joined forces to offer enhanced imaging on mobile phones by incorporating Carl Zeiss optics to Nokia's camera phones, but is it enough to keep leading position!? Is it good optic a key for outstanding photos!?

Apparently Nokia don’t think so and therefore they’ll join forces with Kodak to incorporate their advanced image solutions to improve the over all quality and whole image capture experience of camera phones!?

Nokia and Carl Zeiss and Kodak? Is it wining combination? Well, I am not sure but I have to admit that this sounds very promising and this famous trio is definitely capable to smash competition.