EASTMAN KODAK COMPANY

Name

The letter k was a favorite of George Eastman 's; he is quoted as saying, "it seems a strong, incisive sort of letter." He and his mother, Maria, devised the name Kodak using an Anagrams set. Eastman said that there were three principal concepts he used in creating the name: it should be short, easy to pronounce, and not resemble any other name or be associated with anything else. According to a 1920 ad, the name "was simply invented – made up from letters of the alphabet to meet our trademark requirements. It was short and euphonious and likely to stick in the public mind." The Kodak name was trademarked by Eastman in 1888.

Founding

Eastman entered a partnership with Henry Strong in 1880, and the Eastman Dry Plate Company was founded on January 1, 1881, with Strong as president and Eastman as treasurer. Initially, the company sold dry plates for cameras, but Eastman's interest turned to replacing glass plates altogether with a new roll film process. On October 1, 1884, the company was re-incorporated as the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company. In 1885, Eastman patented the first practical film roll holder with William Walker, which would allow dry plate cameras to store multiple exposures in a camera simultaneously. That same year, Eastman patented a form of paper film he called "American film". Eastman would continue experimenting with cameras and hired chemist Henry Reichenbach to improve the film. These experiments would culminate in an 1889 patent for nitrocellulose film. As the company continued to grow, it was reincorporated several more times. In November 1889, it was renamed the Eastman Company, and 10,000 shares of stock were issued for $100. On May 23, 1892, another round of capitalization occurred and it was renamed Eastman Kodak. An Eastman Kodak of New Jersey was established in 1901 and existed simultaneously with the Eastman Kodak of New York until 1936, when the New York corporation was dissolved and its assets were transferred to the New Jersey corporation. Kodak remains incorporated in New Jersey today, although its headquarters is in Rochester.

The Kodak camera

In 1888, the Kodak camera was patented by Eastman. It was a box camera with a fixed-focus lens on the front and no viewfinder; two V shape silhouettes at the top aided in aiming in the direction of the subject. At the top, it had a rotating key to advance the film, a pull-string to set the shutter, and a button on the side to release it, exposing the celluloid film. Inside, it had a rotating bar to operate the shutter. When the user pressed the button to take a photograph, an inner rope was tightened and the exposure began. Once the photograph had been taken, the user had to rotate the upper key to change the selected frame within the celluloid tape.

The $25 camera came pre-loaded with a film roll of 100 exposures, and could be mailed to Eastman's headquarters in Rochester with $10 for processing. The camera would be returned with prints, negatives, and a new roll of film. Additional rolls were also sold for $2 to professional photographers who wished to develop their own photographs. By unburdening the photographer from the complicated and expensive process of film development, photography became more accessible than ever before. The camera was an immediate success with the public and launched a fad of amateur photography. Eastman's advertising slogan, " You Press the Button, We Do the Rest ", soon entered the public lexicon, and was referenced by Chauncey Depew in a speech and Gilbert and Sullivan in their opera Utopia, Limited.

Expansion

In the 1890s and early 1900s, Kodak grew rapidly and outmaneuvered competitors through a combination of innovation, acquisitions, and exclusive contracts. Eastman recognized that film would return more profit than the cameras that used them, and focused on control of the film market, targeting young, white, middle-class women by launching Kodak Girl advertising. This razor and blades model of sales would change little for several decades. Larger facilities were soon needed in Rochester, and the construction of Kodak Park began in 1890. Kodak purchased and opened several shops and factories in Europe, particularly in the United Kingdom. The British holdings were initially organized under the Eastman Photographic Materials Company. Beginning in 1898, they were placed under the holding company Kodak Limited. An Australian subsidiary, Australia Kodak Limited, was established in 1908. In 1931, Kodak-Pathé was established in France and Kodak AG was formed in Germany following the acquisition of Nagel. The Brownie camera, marketed to children, was first released in 1900, and further expanded the amateur photography market. One of the largest markets for film became the emerging motion picture industry. When Thomas Edison and other film producers formed the Motion Picture Patents Company in 1908, Eastman negotiated for Kodak to be the sole supplier of film to the industry. In 1914, Kodak built its current headquarters on State Street. By 1922, the company was the second-largest purchaser of silver in the United States, behind the U.S. Treasury. Beginning on July 18, 1930, Kodak was included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

During World War I, Kodak established a photographic school in Rochester to train pilots for aerial reconnaissance. The war strained supply chains, and Eastman sought out new chemical sources that the company could have direct control over. At the war's end in 1920, Kodak purchased a hardwood distillation plant in Tennessee from the federal government and established Eastman Tennessee, which later became the Eastman Chemical Company.

Henry Strong died in 1919, after which Eastman became the company president. Eastman began to wind down his involvement in the daily management of the company in the mid-1920s, and formally retired in 1925, although he remained on the board of directors. William Stuber succeeded him as president and managed the company along with Frank Lovejoy.

In 1912, Kodak established the Kodak Research Laboratories at Building 3 in Kodak Park, with Kenneth Mees as director. Research primarily focused on film emulsions for color photography and radiography. In 1915, Kodak began selling Kodachrome,, a two-color film developed by John Capstaff at the research lab. Another two-color film duplitized film was marketed for photography of X-rays as it had a short exposure time and could reduce the dosage of radiation needed to take a photo.

Labor relations

Kodak became closely tied to Rochester, where most of its employees resided, and was at the vanguard of welfare capitalism during the 1910s and 1920s. Eastman implemented several worker benefit programs, including a welfare fund to provide workmen's compensation in 1910 and a profit-sharing program for all employees in 1912. In 1919, he sold a large portion of his stock to company employees below market value. The expansion of benefits continued after Eastman; in 1928, the company began offering life insurance, disability benefits, and retirement annuity plans for employees, at the behest of company statistician Marion Folsom. Many other employers in the Rochester area took cues from Kodak and increased their own wages and benefits to remain competitive in the labor market.

Eastman believed that offering these benefits served the interests of the company. He feared labor unions and believed that offering better compensation than that received by union workers would deter union organizing and avoid the potential costs of a company strike. Selling his stock to employees would simultaneously make it more appealing to investors, who were wary of purchasing shares because of his large stake, and lower the price of the stock, which would keep anti-trust lawyers from investigating the company. Because Kodak was a capital-intensive industry with a low labor-cost ratio, employee benefits contributed less to the company's expenses than they would in other industries.

Employment opportunities were not extended to all Rochesterians. The company almost exclusively hired workers of an Anglo-Saxon background under Eastman, and excluded Catholic immigrants, African-Americans, and Jews. Approximately one-third of employees were female. A system of family hiring, where children of employees would be hired to follow their parents, reinforced the concept of an industrial community that Eastman sought to create. These practices were not seriously challenged until after World War II. As a consequence of this shared background and the robust company benefits, Kodak employees formed a close community that viewed unions as outsiders, and no attempt to organize workers at Kodak succeeded during the 20th century.

Great Depression

Kodak was hard-hit by the Great Depression, although Rochester was spared from its worst effects as banks were able to remain solvent. Seventeen percent of the company's employees were laid off between 1929 and 1933. Company founder George Eastman committed suicide at his home on March 14, 1932, due to his declining health. From 1931 to 1936, Kodak participated in the Rochester Plan, a privately funded unemployment insurance program to assist the jobless and boost consumer spending. The program was created by Marion Folsom, who gained national recognition for his work and would later serve as a company director and cabinet secretary for Dwight D. Eisenhower. Payments were made between 1933 and 1936, when layoffs ended at Kodak. The program led to many statistical improvements at Kodak, but overall had an insignificant effect on the Rochester community, as few companies were willing to join the program.

Research projects led to several new Kodak products in the 1930s. At Kodak Research Laboratories, Leopold Godowsky Jr. and Leopold Mannes invented a three-color film which would be commercially viable. In 1935, the product was launched as Kodachrome. The company also produced industrial high-speed cameras and began to diversify its chemical operations by producing vitamin concentrates and plastics. In 1934, Kodak entered a partnership with Edwin Land to supply polarized lenses, after briefly considering an offer to purchase Land's patents. Land would later launch the Polaroid Corporation and invented the first instant camera using emulsions supplied by Kodak.

Frank Lovejoy succeeded William Stuber as company president in 1934, and Thomas J. Hargrave became president in 1941.

World War II

After the American entry into World War II, Kodak ceased its production of amateur film and began supplying the American war effort at the direction of the War Production Board. The company produced film, cameras, microfilm, pontoons, synthetic fibers, RDX, variable-time fuses, and hand grenades for the government.

Kodak's European subsidiaries continued to operate during the war. Kodak AG, the German subsidiary, was transferred to two trustees in 1941 to allow the company to continue operating in the event of war between Germany and the United States. The company produced film, fuses, triggers, detonators, and other material. Slave labor was employed at Kodak AG's Stuttgart and Berlin-Köpenick plants. During the German occupation of France, Kodak-Pathé facilities in Severan and Vincennes were also used to support the German war effort. Kodak continued to import goods to the United States purchased from Nazi Germany through neutral nations such as Switzerland. This practice was criticized by many American diplomats but defended by others as more beneficial to the American war effort than detrimental. Kodak received no penalties during or after the war for collaboration.

Unlike Germany, in Japan Kodak had already been shut out prior to the war and then banned imports entirely when war broke out with America.

Manhattan Project

After a 1943 meeting between Kenneth Mees and Leslie Groves, a team of Kodak scientists joined the Manhattan Project and enriched uranium-235 at Oak Ridge.

Kodak's experiments with radiation would continue after the war. In 1945, a batch of X-ray film that the company processed mysteriously became fogged. Julian Webb, who had worked at Oak Ridge, proposed that the film had been exposed to radiation released by nuclear weapons tests. The source of the radiation was eventually traced to strawboard packaging from Vincennes, Indiana, which had been irradiated by fallout that had traveled thousands of miles northeast from the Trinity test site. After this discovery, Kodak officials became concerned that fallout would contaminate more of its film, and began monitoring atmospheric radiation levels with rainwater collection at Kodak Park. In 1951, the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) began providing Kodak with a schedule of nuclear tests in exchange for its silence after the company threatened to sue the federal government for damage caused to film products. Kodak was later contracted to create emulsions for radiation tests of fallout from nuclear tests.

Post-war expansion

Kodak reached its zenith in the post-war era, as the usage of film for amateur, commercial, and government purposes all increased. In 1948, Tennessee Eastman created a working acetate film, which quickly replaced nitrate film in the movie industry because it was non-flammable. In 1958, Kodak began marketing a line of super glue, Eastman 910. Its cameras were used by NASA for space exploration. In 1963, the first Instamatic cameras were sold, which were the company's lowest-cost cameras to date. Annual sales passed $1 billion in 1962 and $2 billion in 1966. Albert K. Chapman succeeded Thomas Hargrave as president in 1952, and was succeeded by William S. Vaughn in 1960. Louis K. Eilers would serve as president and CEO between 1969 and 1972. In the 1970s, Kodak published important research in dye lasers, and patented the Bayer Filter method of RGB arrangement on photosensors. They were tasked by NASA to developed thin new films with special emulsions; four types were used for Apollo 8 mission. Kodak stereo close-up camera was used to film the lunar soil during Apollo 11 mission.

During the Cold War, Kodak participated in several clandestine government projects. Beginning in 1955, they were contracted by the CIA to design cameras and develop film for the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft under the Bridgehead Program. Kodak was also contracted by the National Reconnaissance Office to produce cameras for surveillance satellites such as the KH-7 Gambit and KH-9 Hexagon. Between 1963 and 1970, Kodak engineers worked on the cancelled Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, designing optical sensors for a crewed reconnaissance satellite. The company later performed a study for NASA on the astronomical uses of the equipment developed for MOL.

Kodak doubled its number of employees worldwide between 1936 and 1966. The majority remained employed in Rochester, where it was the employer of choice for most. The company continued offering higher wages and more benefits than labor market competitors, including the annual wage dividend, a bonus for all employees, which typically amounted to 15% of base salary. Employee loyalty was strong, and the company experienced a turnover rate of only 13% in the 1950s, compared to 50% for American manufacturers as a whole. Journalist Curt Gerling noted that Kodak employees behaved like a separate class from other workers in Rochester, and "From the cradle infants are impressed with the fact that 'daddy is a Kodak man'; inferentially this compares with 'our father is a 33rd degree mason '". A 1989 New York Times article compared Rochester to a company town.

Kodak's business model changed little from the 1930s to the 1970s, as the company's dominant position made change unnecessary, and it made no mergers or acquisitions, which might bring new perspectives. Research and development remained focused on products related to film production and development, which caused the company to fall behind rivals Polaroid and Xerox in the development of instant cameras and photocopiers. Kodak would begin selling its own versions of each in the mid-1970s, but neither became popular. Both product lines would be abandoned in the 1990s.

Rivalry with Fujifilm

Japanese competitor Fujifilm was founded in the 1930s with the specific goal provided by the state to produce photographic film in Japan instead of buying it from global leader Kodak or the number two Agfa. Fujifilm entered the U.S. market in 1958 and remained a small player until a breakthrough in the 1980s with lower-priced film and supplies. Fuji defeated Kodak in a bid to become the official film of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, which gave it a permanent foothold in the market. Fuji opened a film plant in the U.S., and its aggressive marketing and price cutting began taking market share from Kodak, rising from a 10% share in the early 1990s to 17% in 1997. Fuji also made headway into the professional market with specialty transparency films such as Velvia and Provia, which competed with Kodak's signature professional product, Kodachrome.

Encouraged by shareholders, the company began cutting benefits and making large layoffs to save money. Despite the competition, Kodak's revenues and profits continued to increase during the 1990s, due to the strategy changes and an overall expansion of the global market. Under CEO George M. C. Fisher, Kodak's annual revenue peaked at $16 billion in 1996 and profits peaked at $2.5 billion in 1999.

In May 1995, Kodak filed a petition with the US Commerce Department under section 301 of the Commerce Act, arguing that its poor performance in the Japanese market was a direct result of unfair practices adopted by Fuji. The complaint was lodged by the United States with the World Trade Organization. On January 30, 1998, the WTO announced a "sweeping rejection of Kodak's complaints" about the film market in Japan.

A price war between the two companies began in 1997, eating into Kodak's profits. Kodak's financial results for 1997 showed that the company's revenues dropped from $15.97 billion in 1996 to $14.36 billion in 1997, a fall of more than 10%; its net earnings went from $1.29 billion to just $5 million for the same period. Kodak's market share declined from 80.1% to 74.7% in the United States, a one-year drop of five percentage points.

Fuji and Kodak recognized the upcoming threat of digital photography, and although both sought to diversify as a mitigation strategy, Fuji was more successful at diversification. Fuji stopped production of motion picture film in 2013, leaving Kodak as the last major producer.

Shift to digital

Despite the common misconception that the industry titan's refusal to invest in digital cameras led to its downfall, Kodak was actively involved in the development and production of digital cameras. By 1972, Dr. Roger Van Heyningen, the Director of the Physics Division in Kodak Research Labs (KRL), was convinced that digital imaging would someday replace photographic film and established a small laboratory where researchers began investigating the basic processes of the metal oxide semiconductor technology used to manufacture Charge Coupled Device (CCD) image sensors. In early 1974, KRL began an effort to develop a one-piece color video camera / recorder (now known as a camcorder ), to replace home movie cameras which used 8mm film. While working on this project, Kodak Scientist Peter L. P. Dillon invented integral color image sensors and single-sensor color video cameras, which are now ubiquitous in products such as smart phone cameras, digital cameras and camcorders, digital cinema cameras, medical cameras, automobile cameras, and drones. In 1982, Kodak designed and manufactured a color CCD image sensor having 360,000 pixels, the highest resolution sensor available at the time.

Kodak engineer Steven Sasson developed the first battery operated handheld digital camera prototype in 1975 using a monochrome CCD manufactured by Fairchild having 10,000 pixels. Larry Matteson, another employee, wrote a report in 1979 predicting a complete shift to digital photography would occur by 2010. However, company executives were reluctant to make a strong pivot towards digital technology at the time, since it would require heavy investment for a very limited market and put the company into direct competition with established firms in the computer hardware industry.

Under CEOs Colby Chandler and Kay Whitmore, Kodak instead attempted to diversify its chemical operations. Although these new operations were given large budgets, there was little long-term planning or assistance from outside experts, and most of them resulted in large losses. Another effort to diversify failed when Kodak purchased Sterling Drug in 1988 for $5.1 billion. The drug company was overvalued and soon lost money. Research and development at Kodak Research Laboratories was directed into digital technology during the 1980s, laying the groundwork for a future digital shift.

Kodak sought to establish a presence in the information systems market, acquiring Unix developer Interactive Systems Corporation in early 1988 to operate as a subsidiary of Kodak's newly established software systems division. Kodak's resources enabled Interactive to expand their business, but this raised issues with regard to Kodak's strategy, since the company had previously acquired a 7% stake, diluted to 4.5% by subsequent share issues, in prominent Unix systems vendor Sun Microsystems. Interactive's role in Kodak's strategy was to deliver Unix-based imaging products and to support Kodak's introduction of Photo CD. Interactive planned to release a distribution of Unix System V Release 4 featuring comprehensive support for imaging peripherals such as scanners and printers, along with facilities for colour management and colourspace conversion. Later in 1991, however, Kodak put Interactive up for sale, attracting interest from various technology companies including the SunSoft subsidiary of Sun Microsystems, on whose Solaris operating system Interactive had undertaken development work. SunSoft eventually acquired the systems products division of Interactive in early 1992, leaving the services and technologies division with Kodak, until its eventual sale to SHL Systemhouse in 1993. Kodak would continue its relationship with Sun as a notable customer, integrating various Sun technologies in its document management products. Kodak would later sue Sun for infringing three software patents acquired by Kodak in 1997 from Wang Laboratories.

In 1993, Whitmore announced the company would restructure, and he was succeeded by George M. C. Fisher, a former Motorola CEO, later that year. Under Fisher, the company abandoned diversification in chemicals and focused on an incremental shift to digital technology. Tennessee Eastman was spun off as Eastman Chemical on January 1, 1994, and Sterling Drug's remaining operations were sold in August 1994. Eastman Chemical later became a Fortune 500 company in its own right. A key component of the incremental strategy was Kodak's line of digital self-service kiosks installed in retail locations, where consumers could upload and edit photos, as a replacement for traditional photo developers. Kodak also began manufacturing digital cameras, such as the Apple QuickTake. Film sales continued to rise during the 1990s, delaying the digital transition from occurring faster.

In 2001, film sales began to fall. Under Daniel Carp, Fisher's successor as CEO, Kodak made an aggressive move in the digital camera market with its EasyShare family of digital cameras. By 2005, Kodak ranked No. 1 in the U.S. in digital camera sales, which surged 40% to $5.7 billion. The company also began selling digital medical image systems after acquiring the Israel-based companies Algotec Systems and OREX Computed Radiography. Despite the initial high growth in sales, digital cameras had low profit margins due to strong competition, and the market rapidly matured. Its digital cameras soon were undercut by Asian competitors that could produce and sell cheaper products. Many digital cameras were sold at a loss as a result. The film business, where Kodak enjoyed high profit margins, also continued to fall. The combination of these two factors caused a decline in profits. By 2007, Kodak had dropped to No. 4 in U.S. digital camera sales with a 9.6% share, and by 2010, had dropped to a 7% share, in seventh place behind Canon, Sony, Nikon, and others, according to research firm IDC. An ever-smaller share of digital pictures were being taken on dedicated digital cameras, being gradually displaced by cameras on cellphones, smartphones, and tablets. Digital camera sales peaked in 2007 and declined afterwards.

New strategy

Kodak began another strategy shift after Antonio M. Pérez became CEO in 2005. While Kodak had previously done all development and manufacturing in-house, Pérez shut down factories and outsourced or eliminated manufacturing divisions. Kodak agreed to divest its digital camera manufacturing operations to Flextronics in August 2006, including assembly, production, and testing. The company exited the film camera market altogether, and began to end the production of film products. In total, 13 film plants and 130 photo finishing facilities were closed, and 50,000 employees laid off between 2004 and 2007. In 2009, Kodak announced that it would cease selling Kodachrome color film, ending 74 years of production, after a dramatic decline in sales.

Pérez invested heavily in digital technologies and new services that capitalized on its technology innovation to boost profit margins. He also spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build up a high-margin printer ink business to replace falling film sales, a move which was widely criticized due to the amount of competition present in the printer market, which would make expansion difficult. Kodak's ink strategy rejected the razor and blades business model used by dominant market leader Hewlett-Packard by selling expensive printers with cheaper ink cartridges. In 2011, these new lines of inkjet printers were said to be on verge of turning a profit, although some analysts were skeptical as printouts had been replaced gradually by electronic copies on computers, tablets, and smartphones. Inkjet printers continued to be viewed as one of the company's anchors after it entered bankruptcy proceedings. However, in September 2012, declining sales forced Kodak to announce an exit from the consumer inkjet market.

Bankruptcy

Kodak's finances and stock value continued to decline, and in 2009 the company negotiated a $300 million loan from KKR. Several divisions were sold off to repay debts from previous investments, most notably the Kodak Health Group, one of the company's profitable units. Kodak used the $2.35 billion from the sale to fully repay its approximately $1.15 billion of secured term debt. Around 8,100 employees from the Kodak Health Group transferred to Onex, which was renamed Carestream Health. In 2010, Kodak was removed from the S&P 500.

In the face of growing debts and falling revenues, Kodak also turned to patent litigation to generate revenue. In 2010, it received $838 million from patent licensing that included a settlement with LG. Between 2010 and 2012, Kodak and Apple sued each other in multiple patent infringement lawsuits.

By 2011, Kodak was rapidly using up its cash reserves, stoking fears of bankruptcy; it had $957 million in cash in June 2011, down from $1.6 billion in January 2001. Later that year, Kodak reportedly explored selling off or licensing its vast portfolio of patents to stave off bankruptcy. In December 2011, two board members who had been appointed by KKR resigned. By January 2012, analysts suggested that the company could enter bankruptcy followed by an auction of its patents, as it was reported to be in talks with Citigroup to provide debtor-in-possession financing. This was confirmed on January 19, 2012, when the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and obtained a $950 million, 18-month credit facility from Citigroup to enable it to continue operations. Under the terms of its bankruptcy protection, Kodak had a deadline of February 15, 2013, to produce a reorganization plan. In January 2013, the Court approved financing for Kodak to emerge from bankruptcy by mid 2013.

During bankruptcy proceedings, Kodak sold many of its patents for approximately $525 million to a group of companies (including Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Samsung, Adobe Systems, and HTC ) under the names Intellectual Ventures and RPX Corporation. Kodak announced that it would end the production of several products, including digital cameras, pocket video cameras, digital picture frames, and inkjet printers. As part of a settlement with the UK-based Kodak Pension Plan, Kodak agreed to sell its photographic film, commercial scanners, and photo kiosk operations, which were reorganized as a spinoff company, Kodak Alaris. The Image Sensor Solutions (ISS) division of Kodak was sold to Truesense Imaging Inc.

On September 3, 2013, Kodak announced that it emerged from bankruptcy as a technology company focused on imaging for business. Its main business segments would be Digital Printing & Enterprise and Graphics, Entertainment & Commercial Films.

Kodak's decline and bankruptcy were damaging to the Rochester area. Its jobs were largely replaced with lower-paying ones, contributing to a high poverty rate in the city. Between 2007 and 2018, real GDP losses from Kodak canceled out the growth in all other sectors in Rochester.

Post-bankruptcy

Following Kodak's emergence from bankruptcy in 2013, filmmaker Christopher Nolan organised a coalition of prominent Hollywood filmmakers, including J. J. Abrams, Judd Apatow, Vince Gilligan, Rian Johnson, Bennett Miller, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Quentin Tarantino, to campaign for the continued use and preservation of motion-picture film by lobbying the six major film studios to maintain their support for the format. Their lobbying led to a February 2015 agreement under which Kodak secured film-supply deals with 20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros. Entertainment, NBCUniversal, Paramount Pictures, and Sony Pictures, with the studios committing to purchase specified quantities of Kodak film stock over several years for use in theatrical films and television productions. On March 12, 2014, Kodak announced that Jeffrey J. Clarke had been named as chief executive officer and a member of its board of directors. At the end of 2016, Kodak reported its first annual profit since bankruptcy.

In recent years, Kodak has licensed its brand to several other companies. The California-based company JK Imaging has manufactured Micro Four-Thirds cameras under the Kodak brand since 2013. The Kodak Ektra, a smartphone, was designed by the Bullitt Group and launched in 2016. Digital tablets were announced with Archos in 2017. In 2018, Kodak announced two failed cryptocurrency products; the cryptocurrency KodakCoin, which was developed by RYDE Holding, Inc., and the Kodak Kashminer, a Bitcoin -mining computer which was developed by Spotlite.

In 2016, the Kodak spinoff company eApeiron was founded with assets acquired from Kodak and an investment by Alibaba. The company's mission is to eliminate "knock offs" and promote authenticity.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Kodak announced in late July that year it would begin production of pharmaceutical materials.

Despite the pivot to digital technology, film remains a major component of Kodak's business. The company continues to supply film to the motion picture industry after signing new agreements with major studios in 2015 and 2020. In 2022, Kodak announced it would hire new film technicians after film photography experienced a revival among hobbyists.