Super 8 Camera in Limbo as Massive Losses This Quarter Force Kodak to Rethink Investments

Kodak has unfortunately not been too hot recently. Reports say that Kodak’s lost up to $46 million this quarter, which is a major drop from the same quarter last year, which Kodak made $12 million in profit. Kodak’s Consumer and Film division, which is where Kodak manufactures movie film for their under-development Super 8 camera, is also reported to have lost money this quarter. This in turn has resulted in Kodak laying off 425 workers.

The way that it’s looking, 100 jobs will be cut from Rochester, NY Kodak workers and about 325 will be cut elsewhere. Kodak’s NY location oversees commercial printing, photo printers and motion picture film. Kodak says that a slowdown in the printer market and rising cost of aluminum — which they use in their products — has forced them to take immediate action.

“An overall print market slowdown and rising aluminum costs have impacted our commercial print business,” said Jeff Clarke, Kodak chief executive officer. “We are taking immediate actions to accelerate cost reduction and reduce investments to sharpen our focus as we continue to actively pursue changes to the Kodak product and divisional portfolio.”

Kodak is also says that they will be reducing costs and investments in other areas in hopes of gaining revenue in the future.

However, despite Kodak being at a $46 million dollar loss this quarter, they say that they’re still working on their Super 8 film camera. It’s been almost two years since Kodak first introduce the Super 8 at CES 2016, but Kodak says that they decided to add more features to it after doing some marketing research, so it hasn’t been released yet. We hope that there’s more to see from Kodak’s Super 8 in the near future because it’s really exciting to see Kodak attempting to combine the old with the new; we even awarded it with a Spotlight Award back at CES 2016.

For a quick refresher on Kodak's film camera, here’s a look at the Super 8 from "Tested" at CES 2016:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cn-AwhYOHZE

Sean Berry
Sean Berry
Sean Berry is Videomaker's managing editor.

Related Content