Month: September 2012

Friday September 29th, Eastman Kodak has announced that they are now exiting the consumer printing Business.

Kodak was always a big name in the photography world. With common cliches like “Kodak Moments” being used time and time again. However, these slogans have not been able to help the company very much lately. In January, they filed for bankruptcy protection, they have been desperately trying to get their company back on path ever since, with the decision of no longer producing digital cameras back in February. Clearly Kodak has been struggling with keeping up with the digital times, as their original brand positioning has clearly changed over time.

The company has also tried once to sue RIM and Apple for over 1 billion in damages over patent violations which came to no avail. As a result the company had made some attempts to sell their film business, Photo Kiosk commercial scanning, and their entire patent portfolio. Clearly these were not enough to keep the company afloat, resulting in their decision to slash their entire consumer inkjet printer business.

In these desperate times, Kodak has chosen to focus on a different market, concentrating on “commercial, packaging and functional printing solutions and enterprise services,” according to Kodak. Furthermore, the company is cutting its workforce by 23%, or over 4000 employees in attempts to reduce costs and bring the company out of their long decline. The digital world may be giving some companies like Instagram new opportunities, but for some business that have been around for a while, the drastic change has been hard to keep up with.

(source: Mashable, photo source: Financialpost)

Google’s stock has been on a rise for a couple months now, and are currently still soaring. Google’s stock went from $559 a share in June, to an all time high of $764.89 on September 25th. Shares closed today at $753.46.

Image courtesy of Flickr, TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

Thanks to data provided by the Bespoke Investment Group, Google has surpassed Chevron and IBM in becoming the 5th most valuable company in the United States. In this time period, Google has increased their market cap by over 60 billion dollars, and though they’re at approximately 245 billion dollars. Though they are still far off from the country’s leader in market cap, Apple, which stands at over $631 billion, there is little sign of slowing down for the search engine company.

There are many speculations as to why the stock is going up, while others like Facebook, are going through a detrimental fall. Maybe it’s the fact that Google’s mobile operating system, android, is finally catching up to Apple’s iOs, and their recent release of devices like the Google Nexus 7 has been highly welcomed. Maybe it’s the the fact that people are realizing Facebook is no real threat to Google’s core business. It’s most likely a combination of these things that has Google increasing Stock prices by 30 percent over these 3 months. Whatever it is, those bold predictions that Google’s stock could one day be at $2,000 may not seem like such a stretch after all.

(sources: Business Insider, Mashable)

With the announcement of the brand new iPhone 5, Apple Inc will have people lining up for hours outside of their stores to get their hands on the brand new device.

The overly-eager iPhone fanatics aren’t the only ones lining up though; many reports reveal that Foxconn, the largest manufacturer of Apple products, are forcing students to work assembly lines for ten hours a day, in order to comply with the huge demand for the upcoming iPhone.

This is not the first time Foxconn has been under scrutiny, a few years back, several workers have committed suicide; while there were various reports revealing the company of:

“illegal amounts of overtime, crowded working conditions, under-age workers, improper disposal of hazardous waste and, in some cases, industrial accidents that have killed four people and injured more than 100“

(Source: TheNewYorkTimes)

Seeing as how Apple is now the most valuable company today, their major manufacturer partner would be thought to meet standards higher than such. Furthermore, the recent lawsuit between Samsung and Apple revealed court documents stating Apple’s profit margin on each iPhone is 49-58% percent. One could only wonder why it’s the company’s ethics that would be the tradeoff in their journey to the riches.