Kodak prints its last photo

Almost 12 months ago, KitGuru looked around the market and took stock of the various problems that everyone was facing. At the time, we ran a series of stories on the businesses that we felt were most in trouble. Today, we're hearing that following its Chapter 11 filing earlier this year, it will now shrink its operations right down in an attempt to help the brand stagger forward.

No sooner had KitGuru finished writing about Game and HMV suffering huge problems, before the next two stories were upon us. Micro Anvika and Kodak were both in a very serious situation last winter and, it seems, the deep freeze is settling in for Xmas 2012.

For multi-store electronics chain Micro Anvika, that means a fire sale to try and generate as much cash as possible, whereas for Kodak it means stopping the development, production and sale or printers – while confirming that it will carry on making replacement ink for a while.

August saw IBM-spinoff Lexmark pull out of the printer business and now Kodak will follow the same route.

Over the past 3 years, Kodak has been on a mission to make ink cheaper. You know, to avoid making too much profit. Whoops.

Kodak's official statement includes these lines:-

“Kodak previously announced its intention to emerge as a company focused on commercial, packaging & functional printing solutions and enterprise services, as well as processes to sell its Personalized Imaging and Document Imaging businesses. Consistent with that emergence strategy, Kodak has continued to manage its Consumer Inkjet business for profitability, and the company announced today that, starting in 2013, it will focus that business on the sale of ink to its installed base, and wind down sales of consumer inkjet printers. Kodak expects that this decision will significantly improve cash flow in the U.S. beginning in the first half of 2013.”

KitGuru says: It will be interesting to see how Epson competes now that all of the fringe players are dropping away. Canon is an imaging business with is feet firmly camped in the photography market – so it's printer business is more of an extension of its core business. HP on the other hand, pulls in a tidy sum from PCs and the medical industry – where printers are required.

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