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When Kodak and Polaroid went to war

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Re: When Kodak and Polaroid went to war

#11

Post by treflop »

hattmall wrote: post #10
treflop wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kodak was probably a chemical company first with a depth of chemical knowledge (a bulk of the development of photography was the design of film chemicals). Fujifilm, Kodak’s later main competitor, was in the same boat and they just leaned into chemicals more. Fujifilm survived and then went back to photography and now makes instant photography film again. They also make digital cameras that have a decent following. K…

But they did invest in digitals, heavily. There just wasn't enough there to power the huge ship that had been driven by film. Even if they controlled the entire digitals market it wouldn't compare to the previous film market. Perhaps chemicals could have been a saving grace, but I believe Fujifilm had a sufficiently cushioned blow due to the Xerox subsidiary and the more favorable Japanese Business environment. In co…

I think the big problem was that digital technology just wasn’t good yet to bother making a digital camera. It’s not just the sensor… it’s also storage and processing and it took a few decades before digital cameras were good.

Investing in digital cameras was going to require many years of R&D with little payback. Someone like Sony could do it because they have all these other business sectors to subsidize development.

If Kodak couldn’t go into the chemical business, I’m not sure what else they could have done then.

Re: When Kodak and Polaroid went to war

#12

Post by Suppafly »

hattmall wrote: post #6
fellowniusmonk wrote: post #5

Kodak's failure to respond to the threat of digital photography has always been a classic example of an innovators dilemma fail... but after reading this I realize it was far worse than I thought. Having been given 30-40 years of financial data on the effect of digital photography squeezing them out of one lucrative sector they wasted all that unique foreknowledge on ignoring digital photography in the consumer space…

It's not that they didn't respond. They had loads of digital printers, cameras, digital picture frames, photo papers. They even had fairly innovative stuff, the Kodak Easyshare Frame's fetched a good price for a while. The first frames that you could email a picture too. They even innovated on SmartTV boxes, one of the first items you could watch Youtube on your TV with the "Kodak Home Theatre HD Player" It's not at…

All of their products were a little too cheaply designed and made though. They drug their feet getting into the digital camera game and when they finally did, they released cameras that looked like toys compared to the other companies' offerings.

Re: When Kodak and Polaroid went to war

#13

Post by nsguy »

Suppafly wrote: post #12
hattmall wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that they didn't respond. They had loads of digital printers, cameras, digital picture frames, photo papers. They even had fairly innovative stuff, the Kodak Easyshare Frame's fetched a good price for a while. The first frames that you could email a picture too. They even innovated on SmartTV boxes, one of the first items you could watch Youtube on your TV with the "Kodak Home Theatre HD Player" It's not at…

All of their products were a little too cheaply designed and made though. They drug their feet getting into the digital camera game and when they finally did, they released cameras that looked like toys compared to the other companies' offerings.

I think you're referring to a later period. They had earlier digital cameras that were not cheap and were ahead of the competition. IIRC Kodak invented the digital camera pretty much.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DCS

Re: When Kodak and Polaroid went to war

#15

Post by bradfa »

treflop wrote: post #9
hattmall wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that they didn't respond. They had loads of digital printers, cameras, digital picture frames, photo papers. They even had fairly innovative stuff, the Kodak Easyshare Frame's fetched a good price for a while. The first frames that you could email a picture too. They even innovated on SmartTV boxes, one of the first items you could watch Youtube on your TV with the "Kodak Home Theatre HD Player" It's not at…

Kodak was probably a chemical company first with a depth of chemical knowledge (a bulk of the development of photography was the design of film chemicals). Fujifilm, Kodak’s later main competitor, was in the same boat and they just leaned into chemicals more. Fujifilm survived and then went back to photography and now makes instant photography film again. They also make digital cameras that have a decent following. K…

Kodak did invest heavily into chemicals, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastman_Chemical_Company

Re: When Kodak and Polaroid went to war

#17

Post by ghaff »

hattmall wrote: post #10
treflop wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kodak was probably a chemical company first with a depth of chemical knowledge (a bulk of the development of photography was the design of film chemicals). Fujifilm, Kodak’s later main competitor, was in the same boat and they just leaned into chemicals more. Fujifilm survived and then went back to photography and now makes instant photography film again. They also make digital cameras that have a decent following. K…

But they did invest in digitals, heavily. There just wasn't enough there to power the huge ship that had been driven by film. Even if they controlled the entire digitals market it wouldn't compare to the previous film market. Perhaps chemicals could have been a saving grace, but I believe Fujifilm had a sufficiently cushioned blow due to the Xerox subsidiary and the more favorable Japanese Business environment. In co…

Fujifilm was also just a much smaller company. Which isn’t necessarily an advantage but probably was in this case—and Fujifilm went through some tough times too.

Re: When Kodak and Polaroid went to war

#18

Post by Suppafly »

nsguy wrote: post #13
Suppafly wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of their products were a little too cheaply designed and made though. They drug their feet getting into the digital camera game and when they finally did, they released cameras that looked like toys compared to the other companies' offerings.

I think you're referring to a later period. They had earlier digital cameras that were not cheap and were ahead of the competition. IIRC Kodak invented the digital camera pretty much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DCS

Sure, but those weren't really mass marketed. You don't make money by making one off devices that aren't sold to the general public. The few things that they did market were too expensive and not readily available. Hell most of the links in that wiki are red because none of the individual models were interesting enough to even have their own entries. They started the race and then dropped out instead of investing in long term survival of their company.

Re: When Kodak and Polaroid went to war

#19

Post by Animats »

abecedarius wrote: post #4
indigodaddy wrote: post #3

Why would Land have been such a fierce advocate against the government contracts benefiting Kodak? Was he just trying to get some sort of overall business edge on Kodak even though Polaroid had no real skin in the game WRT the govt contracts? He had to know that Kodak would retaliate in some manner yes? I suppose he severely underestimated the potential backlash to his actions?

The history given seemed consistent with the systems he advocated being just better designs, functionally. Maybe he cared the most about that?

Probably realized the USAF's Manned Orbiting Laboratory as a surveillance station wasn't going to work very well. Taking film pictures in orbit, having astronauts look them over and picking the good parts, then scanning the good parts with a slow scanner was a marginal idea. Transmitting all the data to the ground was much more useful.

There was a USAF thing for "we must control the high ground" in the 1960s and 1970s. The USAF had a space school during the Mercury-Gemini-Apollo years. The USAF wanted manned fighter aircraft that could reach low orbit, and proposed programs for decade after decade. It's a USAF thing. If you've had any involvement with the USAF, you know that there are pilots, and there's everybody else. The pilots are in charge. (Among the pilots, there are fighter pilots, and there's everybody else.)

Re: When Kodak and Polaroid went to war

#20

Post by nsguy »

Suppafly wrote: post #18
nsguy wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're referring to a later period. They had earlier digital cameras that were not cheap and were ahead of the competition. IIRC Kodak invented the digital camera pretty much. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_DCS

Sure, but those weren't really mass marketed. You don't make money by making one off devices that aren't sold to the general public. The few things that they did market were too expensive and not readily available. Hell most of the links in that wiki are red because none of the individual models were interesting enough to even have their own entries. They started the race and then dropped out instead of investing in…

I used a Kodak digital camera in the late 90's. I don't remember the model name. These cameras were not "one offs". They were not quite consumer products either. They were more "Pro-sumer".

Even later they had some pretty good models but were just a touch too late into the consumer market vs. others like Sony, Fuji and Canon when the market exploded. I'm not really sure anyone made a lot of money in this market.

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