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Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

cnn.com

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Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#171

Post by hopelite »

Melatonic wrote: post #84
jljljl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the article it sounds like they had strong market share in Digital Cameras in the early 2000’s. What really killed then was phones becoming the dominant form factor

They should have become a digital sensor supplier like Sony - could have been big if they did it early enough

You imply a major if not the only real factor in all of this, the self-destruction America engaged in to “fight communism” by advantaging others at its own detriment. The simple version of this matter is that in the 70-90s it was Japan, from the 80s Mexico/Latin America, from the 90s on it was China, from the 00s India, etc.

In essence, America was ruined by a kind of fast talking con artistry by people with selfish interests. America has fallen to con artists … “listen here. What you really need to do is help others in my interest, and not help your own in your own interests. That’s the smart thing to do. You see?“

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#172

Post by mhh__ »

mvgoogler wrote: post #113
fallinditch wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, very sad - I really hope they carry on making camera films. This is what we would lose: https://thedarkroom.com/film-brand/kodak

Kodak film products are (confusingly) handled by Kodak-Alaris, which is a separate company that spun out of Eastman Kodak around 2012-ish and shares the Kodak brand with Eastman Kodak. Despite the similar names they are entirely separate companies, AFAIK. My team did an integration with Kodak-Alaris a few years back and we toured their main office in Rochester. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_Alaris

> Based in Hemel Hempstead

Huh

Hopefully they'd be unscratched if the big Kodak goes down (I assume they still have some equity?)

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#173

Post by exasperaited »

Daub wrote: post #166
exasperaited wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Film sales didn't collapse "overnight" in any way -- it should have been easily predictable and their sales of crappy, creaky plastic digital compacts and printers should have told them. If that rubbish was selling, film was doomed. More to the point, the sales of Kodak Photo CD many years earlier should have tipped them off to what would happen once a small, cheap-enough digital camera met the broad quality of the l…

I believe that Kodak’s missed opportunity was in not realizing the social sharing potential of digital photography. They had all the ingredients: the first digital camera, the almost first online sharing of photos… but didn’t grok it. Instead they clung to existing outdated models. A camera nowadays is a different animal to what it was when there were such things as height street photographers. Compare that to the in…

> I believe that Kodak’s missed opportunity was in not realizing the social sharing potential of digital photography.

They were screwed long before capitalising on this was a real possibility. The damage was done to Kodak before the vast majority of consumers had fast enough broadband to share more than a couple of photographs a day.

Kodak was an obviously cheesy, out-of-touch, cheap-looking digital brand by 2000, and it showed (at least to anyone outside the USA). The Fuji, Olympus, Nikon and Canon compacts were better-designed, full stop, and Kodak really even had nothing good in the "office camera", "lab camera" or "art department camera" offerings (which Nikon owned with the Coolpix 900 series, and Canon with the G1/G2/G3).

People simply would not have bought into the idea that anything Kodak did was cool or fun. It was the same bad cheesy smiling family branding nonsense.

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#174

Post by exasperaited »

actionfromafar wrote: post #160
exasperaited wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Film sales didn't collapse "overnight" in any way -- it should have been easily predictable and their sales of crappy, creaky plastic digital compacts and printers should have told them. If that rubbish was selling, film was doomed. More to the point, the sales of Kodak Photo CD many years earlier should have tipped them off to what would happen once a small, cheap-enough digital camera met the broad quality of the l…

This was interesting. https://www.casrilanka.com/casl/images/stories/EDBA/kodak%20...

I had forgotten that whole period when the Photo CD (an actually really useful technology) didn't work with CD ROM drives.

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#177

Post by hopelite »

steveBK123 wrote: post #46
DerekL wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But switching to making digital cameras wouldn’t have helped much, because selling cameras was never really their business. Their main business was selling film, photo paper, developer, etc.

And the mass market consumer digital camera market didn't last terribly long either and is effectively dead. It is now a high end hobby with low volume high margin production. Smartphone cameras and digital distribution of images would have killed them 10-20 years later anyway.

Not if they had specialized in researching camera sensors. But that is also one of the most challenging types of pivots to sell to a board, “you know what we should do, specialize in developing the technology that will make our core business obsolete” is a really hard sell.

It seems to be the very same challenge that Google is now dealing with and suffering from. My understanding is that they could have beat OpenAI to market, but they also realized it would savage their core cash cow the search-ad ecosystem they’ve built over decades now; so they put on the brakes and effectively gave way to the competition being able to overtake them. They choked under pressure. Frankly, just for that reason Nadal should have already been removed by now, almost 3 years after the release of ChatGPT. But it’s also a sign of an incompetent and out of touch board that he has not been removed.

It’s immensely challenging to make such a leap. It’s akin to an addiction, how do you convince a Google to give up its search-ad meth? It is nearly impossible short of drastic events. You have to have a clear vision.

Ironically, it seems Microsoft has been making these types of hard decisions, but that also probably is because they’ve been under some intense pressure in various businesses for a while now, i.e., they have not really been king of the hill in anything that they are not de facto monopolists, e.g., PC OS. It is easier to pivot strategies when you’re not vested in maintaining something and their dominance over the whole government-corporate PC network allows them room to operate for am the time being. But there is also a reason why AI has been called an operating system. In the AI-scale medium term, Windows and its involvement in a user facing computer network is also doomed.

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#178

Post by fennecbutt »

squigz wrote: post #17
specproc wrote: post #15

Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era. Kodak employed a whole town, and many more people besides. We're now waiting on a one-person unicorn. The number of people benefiting from an enterprise has shrunk considerably, with the benefits accruing more tightly within an already wealthy class.

I don't deny wealth disparity is very much a thing, but this doesn't seem the point to make it. How many people does Google employ? Amazon? Apple? Probably as much or more than a small town.

Yeah and how many of those people are on 0 hour contracts with a minimum wage that's barely been adjusted for 30 years.

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#179

Post by actionfromafar »

exasperaited wrote: post #173
Daub wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that Kodak’s missed opportunity was in not realizing the social sharing potential of digital photography. They had all the ingredients: the first digital camera, the almost first online sharing of photos… but didn’t grok it. Instead they clung to existing outdated models. A camera nowadays is a different animal to what it was when there were such things as height street photographers. Compare that to the in…

> I believe that Kodak’s missed opportunity was in not realizing the social sharing potential of digital photography. They were screwed long before capitalising on this was a real possibility. The damage was done to Kodak before the vast majority of consumers had fast enough broadband to share more than a couple of photographs a day. Kodak was an obviously cheesy, out-of-touch, cheap-looking digital brand by 2000, an…

The year 2000 Canon was also the year 2000 Kodak:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_EOS_D2000

Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]

#180

Post by jethkl »

SamuelAdams wrote: post #70

> Kodak aims to conjure up cash by ceasing payments for its retirement pension plan I have always wondered, what happens to a pension plan when the company files for bankruptcy? What happens if the lump sum payment is not enough for retirees? Are they financially screwed until they die?

> Are they financially screwed

I’ll share an anecdote I witnessed in my extended family–it was horrible. When US Air went bankrupt, employees with decades of service, expecting high five-figure to low six-figure annual income, learned they would get roughly $0.20 on the dollar. For many who were entering retirement, the impact was life-changing, and the stress and disruption it caused could well be argued as life-shortening.

PBGC did take over, but that did not solve the problem.

I believe the root cause was mismanagement of the pension, with the bankruptcy merely exposing this. But I wouldn’t be surprised if, at every opportunity during the bankruptcy process, changes were made that eroded the program’s health.

https://www.thestreet.com/investing/stocks/us-airways-pilots...

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