Kodak-Branded Smartphones On the Way 94
An anonymous reader sends news about Kodak's latest attempt to come back from the grave. "For a while there it looked like Kodak's moment had come and gone, but the past few months have seen the imaging icon fight back from the brink of irrelevance. Now the company's planning to push a Kodak-branded smartphone, and thankfully it's not going to sue everyone in the business along the way this time. To be clear, Kodak won't actually make its own devices — instead, it's going to farm out most of the development work to an English company called Bullitt."
Smartphone with 50 Megapixel CCD sensor ? (Score:2)
The only way Kodak can really make a difference in the already crowded smartphone market is to equip the Kodak branded smartphone with its own 50 Megapixel CCD sensor
If Kodak can do that then it has a fighting chance
If Kodak can't, hey, it won't be that much difference from yet-another-reference-design smartphone, aka, the " white-box "
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Trouble is you need roughly APS-C sized sensors to make 50MP resolution worthwhile. Any smaller and quantum effects will make it too noisy. Not to mention the size you'd want for a good enough lens to deliver that much detail.
Turn the device inside out (Score:2)
Instead of calling the device a smartphone equipped with a 50 MP camera, they can market it as a 50 MP camera which is 4G/5G/6G enabled, plus it can make phone calls too
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They might have a fighting chance to have a fraction of a fraction of a percent of marketshare.
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50 Megapixels in a phone is absurd. Even the most absurdly expensive glass has trouble keeping up with Nikon's full frame D800-- and that's only 36 Megapixels. It's more understandable in a medium format camera-- but those are significantly larger than phones, and far more expensive.
What really would be useful in a phone is decent low light performance-- noise free images at ISO 12,800 and beyond (as well as the focusing systems necessitated by this lack of light.)
Re: Smartphone with 50 Megapixel CCD sensor ? (Score:1)
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The only way Kodak can really make a difference... is to equip the Kodak branded smartphone with its own 50 Megapixel CCD sensor
If they released a 100% open phone with complete and transparent control over what data gets transmitted and stored, that would make a difference. Somehow though, I expect the 50MP sensor is more likely.
Re: Smartphone with 50 Megapixel CCD sensor ? (Score:3)
A 100% "open" phone is only important to a small minority of phone buyers. Such a phone would not give Kodak any kind of significant market share based on that alone. A better camera *might* do something for sales, but really, Kodak's days are over.
Perhaps they should have focused on high-end image platforms to compete with Canon and Nikon?
Ok.... (Score:3, Informative)
Old school company decides it's way out of bankruptcy is to compete in a market where one leader takes more profit than all the other competitors put together, and the other leader has more market share than anyone else. What could possibly go wrong?
Sorry guys, you should be looking to sell Kodak-licensed camera tech to the big smartphone vendors.
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That apostrophe is confusing. Is it that hard to learn the difference between it's and its?
Re: Ok.... (Score:2, Informative)
Apparently it's. Many people have trouble with it.
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It apparently is indeed. I always suspected that this was due to the simplicity of English and my belief that you can write it "almost" properly with little knowledge of grammar and analysis. In contrast, to write in French "almost" properly, it's hard to get away without knowing those rules. When used to grammar and analysis, the "it's vs its" dilemma becomes easy to solve.
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Well that's because when Britan and the USA (and several other countries) invaded France to take it away from the German Nazi, they never invaded the language. Over the past 70+ years the French Grammar Nazi's have been keeping the French Language pure.
Now the English Languge on the other hand has slept with everybody and picked up a little special parting gift from every Language.
That's why English has rules. Like I before E except after C unless you are an Efficient Ancient.
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Hopefully not for long...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Eh, wait, given that the camera is one of the biggest selling points on a smart phone, why does it not make sense for a wilely recognized name in cameras to get into the business? As far as the supposed lack of profits in the Android market goes, think about this for a moment: this year, over a billion Android phones will be sold at an average price over $250. That $250 billion dollars revenue, or to put in in more precise terms, a metric crapload. That money gets shares all up and down the Android ecosyste
Bullitt (Score:4, Funny)
Umm, no. (Score:5, Informative)
That's not Kodak, as they are dead. In their dying spasm they sold their name so it can be placed on mediocre rebadged crap. It's disingenuous to talk about Kodak as if their lineage of innovation continues, and isn't just some jerkoffs who bought a famous brand name and are pushing trash and stomping that name into ground until all possible profit can be reamed loose.
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Re:Umm, no. (Score:5, Informative)
That's not Kodak, as they are dead. In their dying spasm they sold their name so it can be placed on mediocre rebadged crap.
Pretty much identical to what happened to 'Polaroid'. Every corpse has its maggots, I suppose.
While it's true that this *is* what happened to Polaroid- that is, the original company is effectively dead and liquidated (*) and the post-2001 "Polaroid" is an unrelated company that bought the name (**) and some of the assets- it technically *isn't* what happened to Kodak.
The present-day Kodak is still the same company. They went into bankruptcy protection, were forced to sell some things off, (***) and then emerged from that about 18 months ago.
That's not to say that they won't be indulging in name licensing anyway, and in this case it's unclear how much- if any- involvement Kodak themselves will have in the manufacture of this phone, or its sale.
In fact, before the bankruptcy it was clear to me that Kodak's problem was that in order to stay afloat in the short term they were being forced to sell off everything that would enable them to survive in the long term (i.e. patents and technical assets). My guess was that- at best- Kodak would survive as a massively pared down shadow of its former self, and at worst would be entirely liquidated and its name sold off to be whored out for its recognition in rebranding cheap generic electronics made by anonymous manufacturers in the Far East (a la "Polaroid").
Then again, even if the core of the "original" Kodak survives with ownership of its name intact, it's open to question how meaningful this would be if most of what made it "Kodak" had been sold off and it had to become little more than a brand-licensing operation anyway.
(*) As far as I can tell, the original Polaroid still "exists", but only as a dormant (and renamed) legal entity that conducts no business [wikipedia.org] and I'm assuming is kept on life support for purely legal reasons related to liabilities after the bankruptcy.
(**) Actually, AFAICT, the company that bought the Polaroid name (apparently quite dubious) themselves went bankrupt, so I'm not sure if the current owners are actually "Polaroid 3"(!!!) Not that it matters much. To be fair, the current owners do appear to be trying to use Polaroid's legacy more respectfully as far as cameras go (e.g. portable printers and cameras with that Lady Gaga tie-up a couple of years back), but they're still continuing the previous owner's model of licensing the name out to third-party distributors who use it to rebrand low-quality generic LCD TVs et al.
(***) I'm not entirely clear what was sold off. One report suggested (if I read it correctly) that they were going to give the film business to the UK pension fund to settle liabilities there, but from what I can tell that's not actually what happened in the end, and Kodak themselves still control the film business.
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"Kodak - The crap goes in before the name goes on." ref [wikipedia.org]
"Kodak - Crap is Job 1" ref [wikipedia.org]
"Kodak -Quality you can't count on!"
"Kodak - you'll remember the cheap quality long after the low price is forgotten."
"An Apple a day keeps the Kodak away!"
"I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that. Or that. Or that either. I'm just a Kodak. Do you want to hear a song?"
When you've been sticking your name on any 3rd party crap that is willing to pay a fee, people aren't going to forget. It's probably better to start a new
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Please resist the temptation to believe every bit of tripe posted on the internet by anonymous experts without doing at least some minimal amount of fact checking. Kodak emerged from bankruptcy [wikipedia.org] in 2013. Parent post is full of crap.
Vintage name phones (Score:2)
Kodak is ok for that but I always wondered why Radio Shack didn't make their own branded smartphones. Realistic was a decent name back in the day, and unlike Kodak they actually sold phones.
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agreed, same opinion here, a lot of it was crap but some was relatively OK.
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Anyway, I'm holding out for a Commodore smart phone!
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gee, as a kid, I spent countless hours there. I usually ended up buying more reliable brands in more distant stores but they got some of my money for sure.
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"Commodore is back!!! (again)" - The Smartphone (Score:2)
Anyway, I'm holding out for a Commodore smart phone!
Why? We all know by this point that such a thing would almost certainly consist of the "chickenhead" logo slapped on some otherwise generic middle-of-the-road smartphone hardware by a third-party licensor armed with a "Commodore is back!" press release (dumbly repeated by the mainstream press) and designed to exploit nostalgia as cheaply and with as little effort as possible.
They might even slap a cheap pastiche of the C64 case on the front if you're *very* lucky (cough).
As I've previously commented [slashdot.org], th
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We still have Radio Shacks in San Antonio.
That said, they seem to mainly be Sprint stores in all but name that happen to sell a few computer/tv items
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Same here... they are staffed by kids that wouldn't know a transistor from watch battery and the few components they have are learning kits for 12 yr olds. When I was kid they had almost any electronic component you could ask for.
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The one near me still has a decent enough part selection in organizer drawers. I purchased an IRF510 there last weekend.
Radio Shack (Score:2)
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Because most people buying smartphones have never stepped into a Radio Shack even once in their life?
who then farms it out to (Score:2)
ZTE or one of a million other cheap crappy china phones that you can already buy flat out for 49.99 with anyone else's logo on it
big fucking deal
Kodak died with Kodachrome (Score:2)
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My name is John Kodak you insensitive clod.
https://www.facebook.com/john.... [facebook.com]
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> My name is John Kodak you insensitive clod.
Well, that was quite a moment.
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There is no Kodak. Fuck whatever is calling itself Kodak today. Kodak died with Kodachrome in 2010.
Get over yourself. Kodachrome was an important product in its day, but it was never *ever* the be-all-and-end-all of Kodak.
I'm pretty sure that latterly the print films (Gold et al) massively outsold it, and the sad truth [photo.net] (from an apparent Kodak insider, "Rowland Mowrey") was that by the late-80s- even before Velvia came out, and long, *long* before digital was eating into it- photographers weren't interested in Kodachrome any more:-
EK had some seriously upgraded Kodachrome films in R&D in the 80s, and sent samples to various professionals at the time. This included the HS Kodachrome with an EI of 400.
NO ONE WANTED THEM!
Read that. NO ONE WANTED THEM. EK could not sell them. They wanted Ektachrome or color negative film. So, that is what they got.
Sorry, but I was there as it happened.
Look for my name on the patent for the yellow color developing agent. It is CD6. Been there, seen it happen. [..] People stopped buying right after the introduction of some serious upgrades to the entire film line, the ones you like right now. Then, when approached with further improvements in speed and grain, with no sacrifice in color, no one was interested.
Do you think EK develops a film and abandons it with no market research? How stupid do you think they are? Back in the 80s, they sent samples to professionals to test out before formal introduction. Reaction was blase. It was "we want Ektachrome, give us more". Remember, there was no Fuji Velvia at this time. The market was Kodachrome and Ektachrome vs Vericolor. So, the market in professionals and amateurs wanted Ektachrome, current Kodachrome, Vericolor, and Gold.
There you have it.
I don't agree either, but that is a fact.
None of what I (or he) said is to say that Kodachrome was a bad film, nor
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http://www.thephoblographer.co... [thephoblographer.com]
It wasn't immediately obvious, especially as they'd been discontinuing variants and paring down the range for years prior, but it appears that the slide films they discontinued that time were *the only ones remaining*, "I’m confirming that we did send a notice to dealers today that we will be discontinuing our three slide films" (not simply "disconti
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Wrong. [wikipedia.org]
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In contrast, some Chinese companies are doing the wise thing for the long run: sell quality stuff at fair prices and actually build a reputation. OnePlus and Xiaomi are good examples of that.
So.... the key back to profit is... (Score:2)
2. Hire another company to build smart phones with no particularly compelling features
3. ????????
4. Profit!
Exactly HOW does that bring a company back from irrelevancy?
Unless they are planning to acquire some whiz-bang startup with new tech or a new social paradigm that is going to make them stand out, this will just continue their slide into obscurity.
Good thing! (Score:2)
To be clear, Kodak won't actually make its own devices
Good thing! Kodak has been shit at this since they started using electronics. The interfaces to their digital cameras were literally the worst in the business.
"moment" (Score:5, Insightful)
Kodak was a dominant technology corporation for over a century. They were dominant through economic downturns, world wars, cultural changes and across industrial sectors. They were one of a handful of the most recognizable brand names of the entire 20th century (they started in 1888). They did business in three centuries.
I'm pretty sure that qualifies as more than a "moment".
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Irrelevant when you're a dead brand whose corpse got bought up for its IP.
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Kodak was developing and patenting new technologies when Steve Jobs' great-grandfather was selling pencils under a bridge.
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You're old enough to recognize Kodak's long-term dominance, but you don't recognize a reference to the "Kodak moment" marketing tagline [wikipedia.org]?
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Of course I recognize the marketing phrase. I was just providing a little context to readers who might not realize that there were technology powerhouse corporations before Apple.
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Not true. Apple invented time.
Laugh (Score:1)
They should bring back the Polaroid, integrate a digital camera into a Polaroid so you gets your digital and your hard copy.
But this? A phone? Bah it will fail.
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Something like this [amazon.co.uk]?
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Sort of, a better implementation would be nice and a larger hard copy, the only thing is these days everyone wants their junk to be small.
Re:Laugh (Score:4, Funny)
the only thing is these days everyone wants their junk to be small.
That's not what the spam in my inbox says.
Watch out for Uncle Ben's (Score:3, Funny)
I'd like a Pan Am smartphone... (Score:3)
... I'd love a Studebaker smartphone, but I would die for an Exidy Sorcerer smartphone.
marketing weasels only, no development (Score:2)
meh, they might as well be sitting in Shenzen making Chinese copies of Korean stuff, it's all relabelling.
Radio Shack all over again (Score:2)
The end is near for Kodak.
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This time, all their drivers will be Linux drivers.
"Please, don't take my [Kodak Phone] away!" (Score:1)
Why? (Score:1)