Eastman Kodak Co. has announced a new deal with Bullit Group Ltd. that will see the once bankrupt company launching Android powered mobile devices.

The company said in a statement that slipped under the radar before Christmas that they were to offer a range of mobiles and tablets that will come “pre-loaded with bespoke image capture, management and sharing features to offer a rich user experience” for consumers who “want a high-end experience but aren’t always as comfortable using increasingly complicated mobile devices.”

The company is pitching the phones based on its camera heritage, but then it gets weird.

“Unlike other phones aimed at this target audience, the Kodak Mobile Device range will not compromise on design and user experience. With as much focus on design as well as usability, the range will stand out in a market segment that is currently under-served.”

A market sector that is under-served??

In the statement they continue to hammer the high end, ease of use angle, suggesting that they either presume people are too stupid to use a phone, or they themselves can’t (we’d think the latter.)

You could suggest that a company with the heritage of Kodak might stand a chance in the mobile market, but that would be disingenuous. Despite having invented the digital camera, Kodak famously went bankrupt in 2012 after failing to embrace a product they invented. What’s left of the once grand company is a rump of services including commercial and consumer printers, touch screen censors and motion picture film; of particular note: they don’t even make cameras any more.

The barrier for entry into Android device manufacturing isn’t hard if you’ve got the money, but that offers another problem: the market is swamped with choice, particularly out of China and more recently India. Even if you’ve got a successful brand, a rich wealth of consumer data, and marketing channels, it doesn’t guarantee success; Amazon couldn’t get it right with the Amazon Fire Phone, and Kodak has none of that going into the market.

While the Bullit Group does bring mobile experience to the table, you’d have to have more money than sense to bet on Kodak becoming a digital version of the biblical tale of Lazarus rising.

The first Kodak handset will be launched at CES 2015, with further devices, including a 4G handset, a tablet and a connected camera being released later in the year.

photo credit: Pranav Bhatt via photopin cc