Camera maker Eastman Kodak Co, and IBM, the world's biggest computer company, said on Thursday that the two US companies had agreed to a deal in which IBM will manufacture digital image sensors for Kodak.
Kodak of Rochester, New York, and International Business Machines Corp. of Armonk, New York, said the multiyear deal calls for IBM to make sensors for use in digital cameras and cameraphones at IBM's Burlington, Vermont, chip plant.
For Kodak, the deal gives the company an assured source of supply for the crucial components at the heart of digital cameras as it aims to more aggressively take on Asian camera makers, many of which operate chip factories of their own.