• Wall Street Journal, Wednesday, July 8, 2009 10:37 AM

The economic downturn clobbered Kodak just as its plan for refocusing on digital markets was gaining traction last year; sales dropped 24% in the fourth quarter and 29% in the first quarter. It's now counting on two new products to help it return to profitability by 2011: a consumer inkjet printer and a very fast digital-inkjet printer for catalogs and direct mailers, William M. Bulkeley reports.

In other upbeat news, CEO Antonio Perez says Kodak's current consumer printer is performing better than it originally expected because customers buy about eight ink cartridges a year, double the industry norm.

Kodak designed its inkjet printers with expensive silicon technology inside the machine, rather than on individual ink cartridges. They cost 30% more than rivals' models, but are cheaper and Kodak markets them to people who do lots of printing.

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