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The MBAs that outsourced camera production to APEC are long retired.
What they actually fumbled was the transition to digital. Keeping analog film/camera assembly in the US would only have led to Kodak running out of money even sooner.
The MBAs that outsourced camera production to APEC are long retired.
What they actually fumbled was the transition to digital. Keeping analog film/camera assembly in the US would only have led to Kodak running out of money even sooner.
It's just the technology that was the underpinning of the entire company has outlived its usefulness. You don't see many companies making horseshoes today - but there were thousands 150 years ago. They didn't fumble anything - just no longer needed.
Not many people remember, but it wasn't that long ago that Kodak was "pivoting to crypto": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KodakCoin At that point, it was pretty clear that they're on borrowed time. I'm surprised they had enough runway / credit to make it to 2025.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Given that Sony and Samsung make, basically, every smartphone cellphone camera sensor, it doesn't seem inconceivable that a more agile Kodak could have fully pivoted to producing cellphone camera sensors, and fully owned that segment, as well as adding value add services that took advantage of their printing expertise. Sending digital photos to Kodak for them to print and mail them back to you wouldn't have saved all…
As for executive pay, I think the biggest problem is that it often seems like the executive class gets richly rewarded whether they succeed or fail. Boeing's former CEO was rewarded more for his failures than most people earn for a lifetime of good performance.
> 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?
> 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?
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What they actually fumbled was the transition to digital. Keeping analog film/camera assembly in the US would only have led to Kodak running out of money even sooner.
I don't know that they really fumbled anything. They had a pretty good set of digital cameras in the early 2000s. I owned one. It's just the technology that was the underpinning of the entire company has outlived its usefulness. You don't see many companies making horseshoes today - but there were thousands 150 years ago. They didn't fumble anything - just no longer needed.
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 give the world the first digital camera[1]. It took mismanagement on a gargantuan scale for them to fail in this manner. [1] https://www.kodak.com/en/company/page/photography-history/
There was no upside at all in being first with this particular invention. No lessons to learn, other than "Keep working on this and try to grab all the patents, even though they will expire before anyone cares."
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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).
Fujifilm recognized that they were a chemistry company and partially pivoted to cosmetics.
https://archive.is/20250424104926/https://www.economist.com/...
Wait, Kodak is still around? I'm not trying to be a dick or shitpost, but I genuinely thought they collapsed after I heard nothing about KodakCoin after the initial announcement.