While the file for bankruptcy came as a shock for consumers at large, Kodak India released a press release in order make some damage control to the rumours stockpiling in India about its operations. We spoke to the company exclusively on its ongoing strategic review process and drive to rapidly improve profitability. The company will focus its Consumer Business on Personal & Professional Imaging Products and Services. These include online and retail-based photo printing, as well as wedding, school and souvenir photo imaging businesses – areas that offer the most significant opportunities for profitable growth. As a result, Kodak plans to phase out of the market for dedicated capture devices – digital cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames – in the first half of 2012.

While the company will discontinue production in the first quarter, it will work closely with its retail partners to ensure an orderly transition, continuing to honour all warranties, and providing technical support and service for its cameras, pocket video cameras and digital picture frames. “For some time, Kodak’s strategy has been to improve margins in the capture device business by narrowing our participation in terms of product portfolio, geographies and retail outlets. 

Today’s announcement is the logical extension of that process, given our analysis of the industry trends,” said Pradeep Jotwani, President, Consumer Businesses, and Kodak Chief Marketing Officer. In addition to its Consumer Businesses segment, Kodak has a Commercial Businesses segment that includes the Digital and Functional Printing, Enterprise Services and Solutions, and Graphics, Entertainment and Commercial Films units. Kodak’s digital businesses now comprise approximately

three-fourths of total revenues.

Kodak continues to have a strong position in the personal imaging market. While photos are increasingly taken on multi-function mobile devices, Kodak technology makes it easy for consumers to produce a broad range of photo products, anywhere, anytime – from prints to photobooks, photo greeting cards and personalized calendars. These items can be made on Kodak products, with Kodak quality at retail, at home, and ordered for delivery to home.

Kodak’s continuing consumer products and services include:

Retail-based photo kiosks and digital dry lab systems, a market in which Kodak is clear worldwide leader. Kodak pioneered the retail-based kiosk market, and the company now has more than 100,000 kiosks and order stations for dry lab systems around the world, with some 30,000 of those units connected to the most popular photo-sharing sites.

Kodak Facebook apps, which make it easy for consumers to obtain photo products using photos from their Facebook albums. 

The Kodak camera accessories and batteries businesses. These products are universally compatible with all camera brands, and extend into other consumer product segments such as charging units for smartphones.

The traditional film capture and photographic paper business, which continues to provide high-quality and innovative products and solutions to consumers, photographers, retailers, photofinishers and professional labs.

Consumer inkjet printers, where Kodak has outpaced overall market growth for several years. Kodak consumer inkjet printers provide consumers with high quality output and the lowest total ink replacement cost. Consumers can send documents and photos to Kodak printers from anywhere, using any web-connected device.(currently not marketed in Asia Pacific Region)

Commenting on the global announcement, Ravi Karamcheti, Managing Director, Kodak India said, “Kodak India will continue to operate as usual, with our consumer business continuing to focus predominately on retail-based photo printing services & professional photo printing services and in developing new segments such as schools photography services. Kodak India had negligible revenues from the discontinued products in Q4 of 2011. Our employees will not be impacted by this announcement

and it is business as usual for India.”

While the writing has been on the wall for quite sometime now, Kodak finally filed for bankruptcy protection under Chapter 11, yesterday, 19 January 2012. Currently the company has secured financing for $950 million from CitiGroup, which will keep them afloat during the bankruptcy proceedings. Although the state of affairs today seemed inevitable going by the company’s recent past and was expected by many in the imaging industry, it has come as a shock for consumers and individuals outside the photography space.

Kodak has tried a number of strategies to turnaround its looming business in the past few years, but has failed miserably with its sales reducing by 50% since 2005. It is widely believed that it’s Kodak’s slow transition in adopting digital technology that is to be blamed for the American Giant’s fate along with unprecedented surge in sales of handheld devices. The two factors together lead to the demise of industry’s seasoned stalwart.

It is common knowledge that film business has been declining for most part of this decade. It was originally projected that film business would decline at about 10% year-on-year. Kodak had projected an estimate of 20% every year. But in reality the decline in this market, annually, has been 40%.

India’s first woman photojournalist, Homai Vyarawalla, breathed her last on 15 January 2012 in a private hospital in Vadodara, Gujarat. At 98, Vyarawalla slipped and collapsed in her home and fractured her left thighbone. The leg injury aggravated respiratory complications that she had developed due to old age, and lead to her sad demise.

Vyarawalla started her career in 1930s, moved to Mumbai and Delhi and chronicled India’s changing face and times. She photographed many political and national leaders including Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi with some of her black and white images went on to become icons of India’s history.

She did a diploma in Arts from JJ School of Arts, Mumbai, and learnt photography from Maneckshaw Vyarawalla whom she married in 1941. After the death of her husband in 1969, she moved to Vadodara in 1973 and retired from photography sorrowful about the “bad behaviour” of the new generation of photographers.

Vyarawalla was awarded Padma Vibhushan, the second highest civilian award of the Republic of India, in 2011. To lose such a dignitary is a loss for the entire nation. With her talent and passion for photography and the indelible work that she has left behind, Vyarawalla is a figure etched in Indian history.

Everyone’s a filmmaker these days, what with the widespread availability of fairly high-quality HD video and the tools to edit and distribute it. But the camera isn’t the only thing you need to make movies. Without a tripod and some kind of motion control system, you’re limited to shaky hand-holding and standing the thing up on tables and chairs. A baby tripod and hacked-together stabilizer are easy enough, but what about a dolly?

The Pico Dolly is priced at $65 if you pre-order it. The repositionable arms are sold separately for $25 each.

Along with pictures you can also shoot High Quality videos with FinePix S2950. You can capture both photos and movies in high-definition 16:9 format. The camera can be yours for the price of Rs 10,999/- (MRP)

Epson recently launched the company’s first range of LED printers that will replace its best selling entry laser printer device range.
 
Comprising of monochrome and colour single function and all-in-one devices, the new printers feature a high performance LED technology that produces high quality, high speed prints with the space and power savings. The new series will continue to use the Epson “AcuLaser” brand for the foreseeable future.

The new range consists of:

Monochrome printer models:

• The Epson AcuLaser M1400 single function mono printer
• The Epson AcuLaser MX14 all-in-one mono printer

Colour printer models:

• The Epson AcuLaser C1700 single function colour printer
• The Epson AcuLaser C17NF all-in-one colour printer with networking and fax

The Epson AcuLaser M1400, MX14, C1700 and C17NF are priced at Rs 5, 350, Rs 8,350, Rs 10, 800 and Rs 19, 500 respectively.

The DPF-W700 & DPF-WA700 digital photo frames will be available in selected countries in Asia Pacific from December 2011 and January 2012 respectively.

Little Printer by BERG lives in your home and brings you news, puzzles and gossip from friends. Use your smartphone to set up subscriptions and Little Printer will gather them together to create a timely, mini-newspaper.

Pre-orders for Little Printer will open in 2012, when it launches as a ‘beta’ product.

Connected to the Web, Little Printer has wide range of sources available to check on your behalf. They are called “publications”. Subscribe to your favourites and choose when you’d like them delivered. Little Printer gathers everything it needs to prepare a neat little personalised package, printed as soon as you press the button. You can get deliveries multiple times a day.

Little Printer sits in your home, but its BERG Cloud does the heavy lifting. BERG Cloud Bridge sits by your broadband router and wirelessly connects Little Printer to the Internet.

The Z340 camera’s one pound, seven ounce, runs on rechargeable lithium-ion battery that prints up to 25 photos and 75 captures.

The Polaroid Z340 camera is available (US, $299.99 MSRP) at B&H, Adorama and Amazon.com, and also at Polaroid.com. Thirty sheets of Polaroid ZINK 3×4” Paper (US, $19.99 MSRP) is also available at the retailers listed above.