Appatic

The Walt Street Journal has reported that Kodak is now preparing to enter into Chapter 11 Of Bankruptcy

Which in turn means that they will be entering in a state of Bankruptcy protection, where they pretty much announce that right now they cannot immediately pay their debts, that they want to renegotiate their debts and enter a deal to pay those debts. While at the same restructure the company to more effectively pay without shutting down operations.  In a  simplified nutshell, that is what Chapter 11 Of Bankruptcy  means.

How Did Kodak Ended Up In This Position?

For years i struggled understanding how Kodak EPIC FAILED this bad, considering they had plenty of time to correct their course. It was not until last year that i got a clear answer on that. Thanks to an interview to Bob Herbold for TechFlash. Where he recounted a story about how Kodak had went to Microsoft to check out new stuff back in the early 90's and how Bill Gates himself told them that Digital Cameras was where it was. And how Gates liked Digital Cameras so much that he even gave them away as a gift at a year end dinner. 

With the meat of the story being that Kodak Top Executives having all the knowledge they needed of the new tech and software to come years later and even direct advice from Bill Gates telling them how things were going to be. All that resulted in Kodak going off their way with all this knowledge and insight and 1 or 2 years of time of action, to end up coming up with the Advantix Film and Camera Line, and also betting very big on it. The Advantix Cameras were Digital cameras that needed film. In a way that made both the cameras and the film processing more expensive...

In Mexico there is a saying that can explain those kind of actions better than I could put it myself:

“There is no worst Blind Man, than the one that don’t wants to see”

It does reads back better in Spanish though: “No hay peor Ciego, que el que no quiere ver”

Having said this, the only thing Kodak can do is to pay back whatever it is that the owe, try to make one last big bet to reinvent themselves and sell up or license up all of their patents to refinance themselves. That is of course if they really want to keep the company alive. 

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