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Once ranked amongst America’s corporate titans and famed for revolutionizing the imaging industry by producing the world’s first digital cameras, photography icon - Eastman Kodak Company is now on the brink of a financial crisis that could see its unmistakable yellow-and-red ‘K’ insignia erased from the memories of yester generations.

The legendary brand has seen its stock pummel from its 1997 peak of $94 to an all-time low of fewer than 80 cents a share, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of jobs and leaving the once venerable market-leader bleakly staring at bankruptcy.  Kodak has already closed down its aging factories, sliced its global payroll to 18,800 from a peak of 145,300 in 1988 and further cutdown on employees, international media reports.

The company has reportedly hired a firm that dispenses advice on bankruptcies and other restricting options.

The New York-based company, whose shares registered the worst sale ever, also runs the risk of being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). A company can be delisted from the NYSE if its shares fall below $1. NYSE has now given Kodak six months to put its house in order.  As of January 2012, the ailing photography powerhouse was getting ready to file for chapter 11 – a US policy that protects a company from its creditors and gives the company breathing space to sort out its business. This move according to financial analysts will cushion the company’s stunning plummeting and just maybe rebound its share sales.

The company is trying to sell off some of its considerable intellectual property asset portfolios – which if it succeeds in doing so, could help avoid the chapter 11 option. However the company has started making preparations like talking to banks about financing loans to keep it afloat during bankruptcy proceedings, in case they fail to sell off the portfolios.

Kodak has been slow at keeping par with the fast and ever-changing technological advances, a trait many say, is what has largely contributed to its slow downfall.After inventing the world’s first digital camera in 1975, the company remained incredibly complacent and unwilling to further tap into the fast-emerging digital arena – a misjudgment that decades later has left the 131-year old business with the threat of extinction.

The transition to digital technology in the late 1990s was swift, but Kodak’s reluctance to ease its heavy reliance on film, allowed Japan-based market rivals like Sony and Canon to venture out into the digital world unhindered - leaving Kodak lagging behind, to date.

At the start of the 2000 millennium, just when things started going fully digital, film sales started to collapse. Around this time Kodak came into the digital market with its ‘Easy Share’ cameras. This was a huge leap for Kodak but it again failed to keep up with advances in the market. As more and more companies – with progressive technologies - entered the market, its profit margins shrunk and its market share slumped.

Kodak was a major film and camera producer in the world. It entered the 30-stock Dow Jones Industrial Average market in 1930 and stayed up to 2004 when it was ejected, and the same year it launched a four-year digital make-over. It closed aged factories, chopped and changed businesses and reduced jobs by tens of thousands. It ended 2007 on a high note with a net income of $676 million, and then went into the recession.