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Kodak which has struggled in the booming digital camera market has introduced what it is calling a major breakthrough in image-sensor technology that increases its sensitivity to light and could well eliminate the need for flash light in cameras.
The as yet unnamed technology could increase a sensors ability to perceive light by up to four times. This would greatly eliminate the need for a flash when photographing in dark environments. The proprietary technology works this way, said Kodak. Currently, a digital camera’s sensor only picks up red, green and blue light pixels.
Half of the sensors are used to see the green light and the remainder evenly split between gathering light from the other two colors. The new system adds a fourth, clear, pixel capable of picking up light from all wavelengths of visible light.
Kodak said this enhances the cameras ability to collect the ambient light available. Kodak has mated this sensor technology with new software that will also enable faster shutter speeds and higher resolution. The first CMOS and CCD sensors using the new technology will become available in sample quantities early in 2008.
Kodak, which is in the last year of a lengthy and expensive transformation into a digital photography company as its film business shrinks, intends to lean on its wealth of intellectual property to boost its bottom line, expecting up to $250 million this year alone in royalties and related revenues.
For example, Chief Executive Antonio Perez has previously said its new inkjet printer strategy grew out of the discovery of existing, unused patents for printer ink.
“Our strategy is to get it out of the lab and onto the street,” said Chris McNiffe, general manager, Kodak Image Sensor Solutions.
Analysts have viewed that outlook skeptically since Kodak has given few details about the types of patents it intends to exploit. Moreover, they say licensing contracts are incremental and hard to bank on in the long term.
“They have been guarded about their portfolio, with certain degrees of success,” said analyst Christopher Chute of research firm IDC. “But at the end of the day you need to have invented something or have some kind of intellectual property in order to maintain a market position.”
Stock Rises
Kodak (up $1.86 to $28.87, Charts, Fortune 500) shares rose to $29.00 – their highest level in more than a year – on the news and were trading nearly 6 percent higher on the New York Stock Exchange Thursday afternoon.
But while the development points to progress in Kodak’s plan, it does not remove some of the company’s more pressing concerns.
“The monetization of Kodak’s IP licensing is a positive to the Kodak story,” said independent analyst Shannon Cross of Cross Research. “However, … the company still faces challenges from losses associated with its inkjet initiative, pressures from the migration to digital cinema and margin challenges in its digital camera business.”
Kodak said the new technology advances an existing Kodak standard in digital imaging. Today, the design of almost all color image sensors is based on the “Bayer Pattern,” an arrangement of red, green and blue pixels first developed by Kodak scientist Bryce Bayer in 1976.
In this design, half of the pixels on the sensor are used to collect green light, with the remaining pixels split evenly between sensitivity to red and blue light.
After exposure, software reconstructs a full-color signal for each pixel in the final image. Kodak’s new proprietary technology adds “clear” pixels to the red, green and blue elements that form the image sensor array, collecting a higher proportion of the light striking the sensor.
Manufacturing customers interested in the design will likely get a chance to sample it in early 2008, but Kodak’s McNiffe was unsure when devices using the technology would be in stores. The technology could be used at first in consumer gadgets such as cell phones and eventually in products made for industrial and scientific imaging.
IDC’s Chute said Kodak would probably use the technology for its own cameras, hoping to gain a competitive edge.
“The potential is always there, but it’s a wait-and-see thing,” he remarked.
