What should kodak have done

Oct 28, Messages: 4, They should found another the division with a name quite different from Kodak and push digital photography. The name Kodak won't sell digital cameras as people think if you make great films you simply can't make good digital cameras. Messages: 26, The article constrains Kodak in the photographic market to consumer products. As this was not the case any such critical evaluation lacks its base.

Furthermore a comparison to Kodak's competitors is lacking. Basically Kodak within the digital crisis focused on consumer products, giving up on most other ranges, whereas one of their major competitors just did the opposite. And, with setbacks, now seems better of. But as Kodak was at the verge of collapse for a while.

Thus picking just one player and bashing him is a bit simple. Messages: 3, Lots of armchair quarterbacks here, but the game was finished some time ago, and no one knows what the score was but Kodak.

As long as they still make Tri-X and D76, that's as far as my interest goes. Messages: 6, Kodak still makes film and that's 15 years or so after digital took over and that's unbelievable. We are living in a best case scenario, i really see little to nothing that kodak could of done to prevent the transition to digital. It's the transition to digital that killed kodak, sure we blame poor management, and lack of investment in new tech and blah blah blah but there is little to no reason for any one other than an enthusiast to shoot film.

Is that harsh? Yes it is and i say this as a person who owns 6 film cameras, still shoots film every week, and checks for film ferania updates daily. Why didm't Fuji go bankrupt?

Last edited by a moderator: Oct 28, Kodak continued to employ large numbers of experienced, trained and well paid people for a long time. In the current world, that is inconsistent with a high stock price, so therefore it is bad. Oct 29, Kodak crashed and burned because they made a knowing decision early on NOT to defend their world-class, world-leading technologies. That included both film and digital. It's as simple as that, really. When it came to film technology, like it or not, Kodak was in total control.

They were the pound gorilla that dominated the field. They had the most money, the best researchers, the best products, the biggest market, and the adoration of generations of loyal customers. Everyone else was just simply trying to keep up. To those who claim Kodak could not keep up with digital imaging technology, they miss the fact that Kodak invented it. And because they invented it there was a point in time at the beginning where by definition they controlled it completely and were ahead of everyone else, bar none.

But somewhere along the line the decision makers at Kodak were served up and swallowed the infamous "easy digital billions" Kool-Aid. They came to believe that only by instantly and completely abandoning their century-plus of world-class emulsion and coating expertise and products could they lay their hands on those elusive digital billions.

And in trying to do so they threw it all away. In the person of their new CEO they ended up working harder to stop film than they did to start anything else. In building their bridge across the river to the promised land, for every new digital plank they laid down in front, they pulled up two analog planks from behind.

Inevitably those dual trend lines crossed leaving them stuck mid-river without a viable path in either direction. What could they have done differently? Defended their top-of-the-line film imaging technology see Sal's post above , marketing it as the higher quality option for discriminating photographers, while they concurrently worked to improve and control their newer digital imaging technology again, see Sal above and carefully blended it into their analog product lines as more appropriate for the birthday candles crowd.

Successful companies make their own markets. The chart below illustrates sales of film alone, film cameras, and stand-alone digital cameras over time. Note that the film sales in blue are represented by the right side axis while the camera sales in green are represented by the left side axis. But this graph is just the output of what happened — or the end result. To understand that, we need to analyze the economics underlying the photography industry.

If you assume the storage is film and processing is taking the roll of film to the drug store for printing, this pretty much sums up the costs incurred for photos during the days of film.

In digital photography the storage costs rapidly go to zero cost of memory that is amortized over limitless reuses and the processing price is also zero if you can simply share your photos online through social media.

The processing price was the cost to have the exposed film processed by a processing location usually in places like supermarkets or drug stores. On a per image basis, this comes out to 54 cents — the majority of the cost being driven by film costs or storage and processing.

Practically the same as the one-time use cameras. This is why one-time use cameras became so popular before the price of digital cameras came down. Digital cameras of the day required the user to have a computer to process the images on and a printer to print them out for sharing with others — a process that was foreign to all but the most techie of consumers.

With storage and processing costs virtually eliminated from the equation, the only thing digital cameras needed was time before they came to dominate photography. The graph above pretty much says it all. To make the comparisons fair, lets assume the digital cameras can take photos before wearing out. Digital was the only thing that made sense anymore. Though they managed to maintain revenues somewhat in line with their historic performance, the foundation of their business began to show serious cracks.

It was a classic case of the innovators dilemma. By , stand-alone digital cameras were peaking in sales just as built-in digital camera modules, a new form of digital cameras, would begin to disrupt the photography market again.

Owners of an iPhone now were able to take photos, store, process and share them all with one device. Benedict Evans has written a great post on this. With virtually no switching cost and extremely low device costs because it was bundled with the overall phone people would take more pictures than ever before. But first lets compare Kodak in with Instagram in to give you an idea of how dramatic this market shift was.

Here are some numbers for comparison where costs are listed from the consumers perspective:. From this data we can see that Kodak was basically the same size in , on a number of images processed basis, as Instagram was in On that same date, Kodak employed roughly 83, people.

Bottom line, Kodak was never going to maintain their film-related revenues and profitability if they stayed in the consumer photography market — film or digital. Like many successful Japanese manufacturers at the time, Fujifilm was aggressively expanding into new markets and would do so by competing on price at the expense of double digit margins. As the digital age emerged and each business recognized the eventual death of film, Kodak invested heavily into digital photography while Fujifilm placed its bet on document solutions.

Bringing the majority of profits from this business under the Fujifilm umbrella is often cited by the company as the shelter under which they weathered the digital photography storm. Experts in their fields, worth listening to, are the ones who write our articles. We believe these are the real commentators of the future. We quickly and accurately deliver serious information around the world. BBN Times provides its readers human expertise to find trusted answers by providing a platform and a voice to anyone willing to know more about the latest trends.

Stay tuned, the revolution has begun. Open Menu. What Should Kodak have Done? Leave your comments Post comment as a guest Name Required :. Submit Comment Agree to terms and condition. Anthony Nachter. The younger generation doesn't have the emotional attachment to Kodac. Sean Quincey. Piotr Grabowski. Jordan Wilce. Kodak should have clearly invested in the Cell Phone Revolution. Mark Fraser. Even today, there is nothing like photos on Kodachrome Grant Wright. Kodak died and so did Rochester along with it.

Rob Norman. This changes everything I had though about Kodak! Glad you covered this! Share this article. Related articles Companies.