Alongside last week's Q4 results Kodak announced that it would be shedding 3,500-4,500 jobs as a result of the downturn. Of course, Kodak's core businesses have been adversely impacted by the dramatic reduction in discretionary spend by consumers, along with a rapid decline in global print demand. However, one might have imagined that of all our industry suppliers, Kodak could potentially have been in the best shape to weather the economic storm with minimal disruption because it went into 2008 having completed a four-year "transformation" project that had already involved halving its worldwide workforce by reducing it to circa 27,000 employees.

The fresh measures announced will cost some $300m and yield annual savings estimated at $300m-$350m. But what, I wonder, are the less immediately measurable effects of this additional restructuring, in terms of a further period of navel-gazing and internal focus. How much does that cost? And surely this is the last thing Kodak needs any more of? The company's challenges in the graphic arts part of its business were perfectly illustrated to me at last summer's drupa, where Kodak showed a concept press using the Stream ink-jet technology that was itself first announced back in 2004, yet HP rocked up with its fully-functioning Inkjet Web and went on to announce its first customers at the show. While Kodak's management are embroiled in yet more restructuring, outside the window the world is moving on and customers are buying products from someone else - as the results from HP, Xerox, and Canon among others can attest.

There's a hint that Kodak may hive off or pull back from some of its operations and manufacturing activities, although when discussing the Q408 results chief Antonio Perez did specifically cite continuous ink-jet and workflow, along with consumer ink-jet, as key areas where the company was "not going to slow down".  We'll know more after the firm's scheduled investor meeting later this week.

Meanwhile, the company's share price slumped to a historic low of $4.28 (to put that into context, a year ago it was $20, four years ago $30). In other circumstances the once mighty Kodak could be viewed as a takeover target, I imagine its remaining employees must be praying it doesn't come to that.