2013 will be a big letdown for countless Kodak inkjet printer users. The company plans to entirely stop selling inkjet printers. Instead Eastman Kodak aims to direct its interest on commercial printing.
Kodak struggles to adapt to the digital age. All efforts to stay afloat had come to waste as Kodak had filed for bankruptcy earlier this year. To survive and adapt it has totally shutdown production of digital cameras, concluding that it has become less profitable. The reason, consumers found no promise in digital cameras. People now rely heavily on mobile devices to take snap shots and share digitally. Due to the fading demand, the company needs to streamline operation. But, even with the cuts the down trend continues to spiral. The production of inkjet has to go as well as part of winding down its consumer businesses.
The move will mean more job cuts to Kodak employees. The latest shift is in the right direction, but not to its employees. It needs to lay-off 200 more employees in addition to the 1,000 given notice earlier this month. This brings to 2,700 job cuts for this year. It is quite disheartening, considering that Kodak has over 60,000 employees during its heyday. For the moment only 13,000 are in the active status. Closing down the inkjet printer business will generate $90million in revenues for the company. With a leaner workforce, Kodak expects to be viable again and profitable.
Kodak intends to sell its patents. With the desire to pay back its creditors, Kodak is selling its patents. Earlier, efforts to auction off 1,000 of it imaging patents had been abandoned in favor of a licensing company created for the purpose. The patents held by the company are worth over 2.5 billion dollars. Sale of the patents will more than appease creditors and place the company in a better position. And as a sign of good faith, Kodak had asked the bankruptcy court for a right to a reorganization plan up to February 28, 2013.
Kodak expects to bounce back from bankruptcy. All of these efforts laid in place should make things better for the company. They could bounce back from bouts of bankruptcy and emerge in the best of health, business wise. This will now be good news to its creditors and its shareholders. However, while the reorganization is on going, existing users of Kodak inkjet printers are still covered generously. Kodak will not stop production of inks, but continue to sell. Users will not be orphaned entirely, but continue to receive support from Kodak.
Photo credit: t-miki via Foter.com / CC BY-ND
