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)