Reasons Behind the Demise of Kodak 200
pbahra tips a story that goes into the reasons behind Kodak's decline and fall. Quoting:
"With digital, a significant shift in mind-set occurred in the meanings associated with cameras. Rather than being identified as a piece of purely photographic equipment, digital cameras came to be seen as electronic gadgets. The implications of this shift were enormous. With digital devices, newcomers such as Sony were able to bypass one of Kodak’s massive strengths: its distribution network. Instead, digital cameras became available in electronic retail outlets next to other gadgets. Kodak was now playing on Sony’s and other entrants’ turf rather than its own. Similarly, Kodak’s brand came to be associated with traditional photography rather than digital."
They Did react to the market! (Score:4, Interesting)
But poorly.
I never saw a digital camera from Kodak that I would want to use, let alone purchase.
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I had use of a few of their film cameras years ago, none were great.
I think they were able to sell the cameras cheaper than other companies because they owned the tech for the film and it's packaging format.
Other than the cheap point and shoot market I never saw Kodak compete well against any other camera company.
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Loved the film though....
I bought my first digital camera (Pentax) thinking it would make a nice backup to my various film SLR's.
I was wrong, I never bought film again.
Another perspective from a pro photographers view (Score:5, Interesting)
But...Kodak invented digital cameras (Score:5, Interesting)
1975: Steven Sasson, then an electrical engineer at Kodak, invented the digital camera.
1976: The Bayer Pattern color filter array (CFA) was invented by Eastman Kodak researcher Bryce Bayer. The order in which dyes are placed on an image sensor photosite is still in use today. The basic technology is still the most commonly used of its kind to date.
They also produced the first digital SLRs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DCS
And, their sensor division made extremely high quality sensors for scientific, industrial and consumer cameras.
Makes it even more ironic and baffling that they couldn't make it in the digital world.
Re:So, let them die. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think there is plenty wrong to find in Kodak's history, but not as obvious as many think.
I went deep into another post in this article here: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2695641&cid=39177755 [slashdot.org]
There is one common trait that Kodak shares with every single other company out there (and most American households, ironically) and it's that they lived nearly month to month. Unlike households (that tend to just want to enjoy the moment so they don’t save for a year of potential unemployment) most companies don’t like having too much money "burning a hole in their pockets" since they feel every unspent penny is missed opportunity.
They live with barely enough money to pay operational costs for a month or two. If profits go down, they are forced to fire people left and right (why we see investors go crazy for small 2% profit drops.) Some drastic thing happens that changes your market within a year and you will go bankrupt quickly, even if you are willing to adapt or even if you are yourself the first to start such a market trend.
Re:So, let them die. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not sure why people think that it wasn't a right and proper thing for Kodak to die.
Kodak's strenght was film photography. There turned out to be plenty of other companies with strengths in digital, why should Kodak have colonized that market? Let them produce the stuff they're good at as long as people want it, then quietly go away. There's no reason corporations need to be immortal.
I don't see "people thinking" Kodak should or shouldn't die in TFA . . . more of a postmortem analysis.
Anyway, I understand that there's no reason for corps to be immortal, but most people working at a given firm would just as soon it didn't go belly up right now while they're working there. Even if you're looking to quit a place, you'd rather do it on your schedule than the liquidator's.
A sibling of this comment mentions Xerox missing the boat with the GUI, but they seem to have re-invented themselves nowadays doing OCR and image recognition and document and photo management and analysis. Probably too soon to know if this will work, but they did hang on when their market changed.
Likewise with Kodak, you'd think they could have found other things to do in the photography arena. You've got websites like Flickr that store and share photos, Shutterfly and Snapfish that provide hard copies in formats that an ordinary home or office printer can't produce. Kodak probably should have gotten into those areas, among others. But as TFA mentions, they had such an emotional and physical investment in film they didn't want to let go of it.
And what about Fuji? They do plenty of digital stuff, but you can still buy their film. TFA doesn't mention what they did differently.
Re:Pretty simple (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile Samsung has gone from selling cheap tat to top of the range. Who is is making the profit? Is there a lesson here?
Re:Pretty simple (Score:3, Interesting)
I think it's fair to say that Kodak adopted digital imaging about as well as Xerox adapted all of the ground-breaking technology out of Xerox PARC. That is, not well at all.
Many people say they should've gone into the camera business but I don't think that would've worked. Not many American companies can compete in the world of consumer electronics these days and the digital camera business is mostly a consumer electronics industry.
Maybe they should've tried to create the iTunes and iPod of photography. Take your pictures with whatever camera you want, but if you want to make your pictures look their best plug them into the eKodak kiosk or iKodak software for your home computer and we'll make them look better, and allow you to share them with Granny online or send her some pretty photo albums. Sort of iPhoto meets Flickr meets Facebook.
Re:But...Kodak invented digital cameras (Score:4, Interesting)
They also produced the first digital SLRs
Which may explain why Nikon is still big in cameras, while Kodak is not.
Re:Pretty simple (Score:4, Interesting)
interesting. Kodak made the best neg film in the world, and (maybe?) continue to do so.
their motion picture stocks are crazy high latitude, and crazy low grain. good fun to work with. the latest stocks barely even need light metering - you'll get a picture even if you fuck up completely.
cinematographers would only use fuji as a special effect or if they had bucketloads of light and could use a slow stock (which would be a little bit sharper than the kodak, but at the expense of less latitude from having a "thinner" emulsion).
of course, everyone shoots RED now because they're pov. but they still dream of having the budget to shoot film.