Kodak To Stop Making Digital Cameras

The Register’s Hard Reg reports that beleaguered former photographic monolith Kodak is discontinuing its lines of digital cameras, handheld video cameras, and digital photo frames, to focus on its still profitable lines of business – online and retail-based photo printing and desktop inkjet printing, although the company is open to licensing its brand to camera makers wanting to cash in on the Kodak name.

The report notes that Kodak, which entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on January 19, says it will spend $30 million shutting down its camera and related divisions, which will save it an estimated $100 million annually.

In a recent ‘Book Mystique retrospective essay, I observed that Kodak has been on the bubble for the better part a decade, posting just one profitable year since 2004, and having shrunk to a mere shadow of its former towering corporate self.

From a peak of 145,300 employees in 1988, Kodak has radically downsized its global payroll to 18,800, and at its home base facility in upstate Rochester, New York to 7,100 from 60,400 workers there in 1982.

Ironically, Kodak fell victim to a technology attributed to one of its own engineers, Steven Sasson, credited with creating the first digital camera back in 1975. Film imaging had been Kodak’s lifeblood since its founding back in 1880 by George Eastman, who brought photography to the masses in 1900 with the Brownie Camera which sold for the princely sum of a single dollar (although dollars were a lot bigger back then).

Kodak embraced digital imaging technology, and was an early leader in bringing consumer level digital cameras to market. By 2001 it was the number two digital camera vendor in the U.S. behind Sony in sales, although it subsequently faded to fourth place.

Kodak recently sued Apple for alleged patent infringement, Apple responding by petitioning the US Bankruptcy Court in the Southern District of New York to prevent Kodak from using certain disputed patents as collateral to obtain loans, contending that those Kodak patents actually belong to Apple. The petition filing says Kodak is seeking authority to enter into a $950 million postpetition financing facility secured by security interests in and liens upon substantially all of Kodaks assets, including certain patents that are subject to ongoing patent ownership and patent infringement disputes between Kodak and Apple, and that the disputed intellectual property involves pioneering work on digital camera and imaging technology and related hardware, software, and user and communication interfaces dating back to the early 1990s, when Apple partnered with Kodak to explore how the two companies could work together on various projects including commercialization of Apple’s digital cameras.

To read more, visit:

Hard Reg:
http://bit.ly/zGhdag

Charles W. Moore ‘Book Mystique:
http://bit.ly/wStuzI