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Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]
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Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]
#32[deleted]
Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]
#33It’s sad to see. As I understand it, digital photography forced camera companies to decide if they were principally about film or about photos and imaging. The competition in the image space was brutal, which phones winning the mass market by a huge margin. Those that quietly moved into recondite but valuable areas of technical specialisation did much better, but they’re not camera companies anymore.
Kodak could rightfully lay claim to having been the first tech platform company. With the Brownie camera - released in 1900.
My father worked there for 33 years. I did an internship in 1984. My boss took me on a tour of one of the buildings at our site - where all disc cameras were manufactured. When I did my internship, the single site where I worked employed 14,000 people. Our start and end times were staggered in five minute increments to manage traffic.
Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]
#34Pitbull (Mr. Worldwide) will be sad to hear this. Picture that with a Kodak.
And for us a little older, Paul Simon. After all, Kodachrome gives us those nice bright colors, and the greens of summers.
Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]
#35It’s sad to see. As I understand it, digital photography forced camera companies to decide if they were principally about film or about photos and imaging. The competition in the image space was brutal, which phones winning the mass market by a huge margin. Those that quietly moved into recondite but valuable areas of technical specialisation did much better, but they’re not camera companies anymore.
Kodak itself was the first to demonstrate a digital camera in 1975.[0] There is no one else to blame for any decisions. [0] https://www.seattlepi.com/business/article/kodak-engineer-ha...
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.
Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]
#36It’s sad to see. As I understand it, digital photography forced camera companies to decide if they were principally about film or about photos and imaging. The competition in the image space was brutal, which phones winning the mass market by a huge margin. Those that quietly moved into recondite but valuable areas of technical specialisation did much better, but they’re not camera companies anymore.
Kodak's failure to capitalize on their invention of the digital camera is so often cited as the cause of their downfall that it has taken on the air of truth. Whether it really was the cause of their demise or not, I'm not so sure. Suppose theyd come out with a line of digital cameras. Would that have saved them? That seems unlikely.
Looking around at similar companies, Nikon and Zeiss became specialist lens makers, for (eg) medical devices, specialist optics like binoculars, and yes, phones. Fuji got into medical imaging, x rays etc. Its almost like they all realized they were in the image business but in different ways.
One peer I find especially interesting is Corning as they were a similar one-trick pony (glass) in upstate New York. But Corning survived, and Kodak didnt. Gorilla glass for phones, fiber optics, etc are a million miles away from pyrex and labware. Why were Corning able to pivot and thrive, and not Kodak?
Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]
#37I'm confused. Isn't kodak a printer company?
Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
Heh, I was musing on something I'd read recently that had Kodak as a case study. It was compared with Instagram which had about 10-15 staff when it was bought for USD 1bn. WhatsApp similarly small. I hear tech can be big employers, maybe I'm overselling my point a bit there. That said, the trend is very much towards smaller operations, and a large headcount is not at all required for large money. My overall point is…
Disagree. It's not a small office worth of staff. You're not counting all the jobs involved in providing the data centers.
Those aren't employees of instagram or whatsapp
Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]
#39They literally invented the digital camera
Re: Kodak says it might have to cease operations [updated]
#40Interesting 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.
> Interesting to compare the tech companies of last century with those of this era. The 'tech companies' (equivalent) of the past tended to deal with physical goods, and so needed physical means of scaling to become as large as they did. More recent tech companies are often software goods and services, where physical means of scaling may not be as important (though see perhaps with Moore and Dennard). Though those wh…
Apple and Microsoft are the 2nd and 3rd largest companies in the US (by market cap), Kodak never came close to that