News

Kodak establishing open standards for digital system

February 26, 2002

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - Eager to spur innovation and make its digital photofinishing software the industry's standard, Eastman Kodak Co. (NYSE:EK) on Oct. 31 announced plans to establish an open architectural standard for its retail digital equipment software.

As part of this new direction, the company will offer a pair of software development kits through a special Web site.

Kodak's digital photofinishing program has resulted in one of the kiosk industry's largest deployments. Kodak has created more than 35,000 digital photo development and customizing kiosks throughout the world. Under the new system, the Picture Maker kiosks will also be available to third-party providers, giving customer more options.

Making its Kodak Image Access Standard openly available will allow retailers more options in the products they offer to customers, Kodak officials said. Kodak envisions this move benefiting customers, who will have more processing choices, and software developers, who will have more incentive to create better digital software programs.

"By making the Kodak Image Access Standard available to third-party developers, we'll spur the development of new software, hardware and services that will work seamlessly with Kodak's retail digital equipment," Rick Rommel, Kodak director of digital retail systems, said in a news release.

"This benefits both the retailer and the consumer," Rommel added. "Retailers will find it easier to incorporate online photofinishing and in-store print fulfillment into their existing operations and they'll offer consumers an increasingly wide array of innovative new services, driven largely by software applications enabled by the Kodak Image Access Standard."

With the open architecture system, Kodak anticipates customers will be able to access photos off home computers, e-mail, and any online photo archive.