Buried in bankruptcy debt and struggling to stay afloat, Kodak just put a “for sale” sign on its film business. That’s right. The makers of Kodachrome, the company that invented roll film, and the maker of many moments is going to stop selling film. That’s like saying Ford Motor Company is going to stop selling cars.In addition to its film business, Kodak is also trying to offload its digital photo kiosk division and heavy duty scanner business. And those photobooths at Six Flags, those are for sale too. Actually, at this point it’s not totally clear what products Kodak has left. It got out of the camera business back in 2006 — it’s worth noting here that Kodak invented the digital camera — and shed its once highly profitable health care imaging group a year later. In 2009, the company cut the cord on Kodachrome and also got rid of it’s organic LED division, and by the beginning of this year, the entire company was bankrupt. Yet the yard sale continues since Kodak still has to repay more than $660 million owed banks like Citigroup who fronted them the cash for their bankruptcy loan.This leaves Kodak with not much more than a pile of patents and an inkjet printer business. They have high hopes for the patents. Having acquired over 1,100 patents in its 132-year history, Kodak was hoping to get between $2.2 billion and $2.6 billion for their portfolio, but that’s not worked out so far. Initial bids amounted to less than $250 million, and then this week, the company announced that it might not sell all of the patents after all. What if they need them for their soon-to-be centerstage inkjet printer business!Inevitably, it’s a little bit sad that we won’t see the little yellow boxes behind the counter at Walgreen’s anymore. Then again, when was the last time you actually bought film?
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