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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]

#41

Post by _aavaa_ »

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.

How many Kodak workers had to pee in bottles, or needed suicide nets around their company dorms?

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

#46

Post by steveBK123 »

DerekL wrote: post #35
dtagames wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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

#49

Post by kstrauser »

specproc wrote: post #22
throw0101a wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

That's a challenging comparison, though, as Instagram never had to do fundamental research. They wrote an app. One that has to scale to enormous traffic, to be sure, but that came after they were a 10-15 person company. Meanwhile, Kodak was inventing lens technology and film chemistry and manufacturing processes and distribution channels.

Similarly, Ford has more employees than Gran Turismo, but they're not in the same industry.

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

#50

Post by myrmidon »

kjellsbells wrote: post #36
moomin wrote: post #4

It’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,…

One important point I think is that Kodak, at its core, was a huge company specialized in photography related chemistry.

Not easy to turn a company around when the knowledge/qualifications/experience of most of your employees becomes almost worthless.

Thats also what made it easier for others (like Corning) to pivot (presumably).

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