On the brink: Is Kodak's picture fading?

Like many iconic U.S. companies now struggling to thrive, or even just survive, Eastman Kodak (EK) is a former titan rocked by technological changes that fundamentally altered the market for its most important products.

Long one of the world's leading manufacturers of photographic film, Kodak has struggled in the era of digital cameras. And that has forced it to make painful cuts. Kodak, based in Rochester, New York, announced in January that it would slash its workforce by as much as 18%, to fewer than 20,000 employees: roughly the number of workers it had during the Great Depression, and a fraction of the more than 145,000 it employed at its peak in the late 1980s.