Snappier outlook

Kodak, the one-time film giant and inventor of the digital camera that emerged from bankruptcy protection in September, has been reincarnated as a commercial and digital printing company focused on Asia and China.

Evandro Matteucci, Kodak's general manager of graphics business and vice-president of marketing in the Asia-Pacific, said the firm had completed its restructuring and been born anew.

"The filing of bankruptcy protection in January 2012 was not an easy choice but a very necessary one as it gave time for us to go through the restructuring process to sell out of non-core assets and businesses," Matteucci said. "We are now a much leaner but a more cost-effective and profitable company."

The 134-year-old firm had its glory days in the past century but Kodak's moment has come and gone. The company that ruled the world of film photography for more than a century survived two world wars, numerous financial crises and keen competition from Japanese film and camera makers in the 1980s. But it was not able to withstand a more recent shift to picture taking on smartphones and digital cameras, with people no longer needing its flagship film products.

Rivals such as Canon and Sony moved into digital cameras more aggressively while another Japanese rival, Fuji Film, also expanded into digital cameras and branched out into skin-care products. Kodak was derided for sticking with film for too long and eventually ran into serious debt problems.

Matteucci said the restructuring meant Kodak was no longer a film and camera company. It sold the photo and film business to its former employees and has also stopped selling inkjet printers. It no longer makes its own cameras, but the brand lives on on new fixed-lens digital cameras made by US company JK Imaging under a licensing agreement.