Over the last five or six years we've become very close to Kodak as they enabled us to take photo scanning into a new dimension. Their Kodak s1220 was the foundation of our bulk photo scanning service. Over the years we've had the privilege of helping them by testing new scanners as they became available.
Of course most of us became familiar with Kodak as kids, because Kodak own imaging. Our family has owned Kodak cameras and the majority of our photos and slides were taken on Kodak material. I felt immensely sorry when Kodak ran into trouble, not half as much trouble as I felt they'd gather when their CEO decided to reinvent Kodak as a printer company. Lately they've been in a financial harbour, waiting for a combination of patent sell-offs and restructuring to allow them to join the market once more.
But what about our friends in the Kodak imaging business? I'm sure they hear rumours but I've no idea who will take them under their wing, except today there's been an announcement that Brother of Japan seem to be making a bid for the document scanning arm of Kodak (which might I'm guessing include photo scanning).
So let's be clear about this, a successful printer company is offering to buy the scanning division of a company with a proud heritage in photo systems, to fund it turning itself into (yet another) printer company. And the CEO of Kodak hasn't drawn the obvious conclusion?
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