Kodak exiting the digital-camera world

ROCHESTER, N.Y., Feb. 10 (UPI) -- U.S. company Eastman Kodak, which recently filed for bankruptcy, says it will no longer produce digital cameras, which it invented in 1975.

Kodak said it would also stop producing pocket-sized video cameras and digital photo frames, the Chicago Tribune reported.

The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last month.

Kodak said it would seek to license its brand name to other device makers in an effort to increase profits and emerge from bankruptcy.

The end of camera production was a blow, said former employee Steve Sasson, who invented the digital camera in a Kodak laboratory in 1975 when he was 25 years old.

"Of course I'm saddened by it," he told The Wall Street Journal. "We had a long history of enabling people to capture pictures."

Kodak will work to emerge from Chapter 11 as a smaller company built around online and retail-based photo kiosks, commercial printers, camera accessories and batteries, analysts said.