The iconic company on Friday said it would quit making desktop inkjet printers and focus on churning out ink for the millions of printers it already has sold.
That abrupt about-face comes after Kodak has spent nearly a decade and many hundreds of millions of dollars to create the printers, which it started selling in 2007. Now the printers will join other Kodak operations, such as retail store photo kiosks and document scanners, that within the past few weeks quickly went from being part of the company’s future to a once-was.
In place of desktop printers, Kodak has said “functional printing” — using printing technology as a way of manufacturing everything from circuit boards to flat batteries — will be key to its post-bankruptcy plans.
The shuttering of the printer business comes as no surprise given that Kodak’s so-far failed attempt to sell the 1,100 digital imaging patents “is killing them,” said Charles LeCompte, a senior analyst with imaging industry research firm Photizo Group. “They can’t afford to hold on to this business.”
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