Goodbye Kodak

[Pepsi]

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technology is changing so quickly, Kodak's business model is no longer.. my how the mighty have fallen 

The Picture for Kodak Is Not Pretty

Eastman Kodak says it has no intention of filing for bankruptcy. Shares of the money losing company are recovering Monday after plummeting 54% on Friday on news that it hired law firm Jones Day - known as bankruptcy and restructuring experts.

Whether or not they go under, Kodak is a long suffering American icon. The company has not made a profit since 2007 and revenues has dwindled for the last decade. In 2004, the company was removed from the Dow Jones Industrial Average after 74 years on the blue chip index. In 2010, it was removed from the S&P 500.

Kodak, the maker of photography film for well over a century, once enjoyed 80% market share for film. The firm first started its decline in the 1980's when Japanese competitors like Fuji film took business with lower prices. In fact, as Peter Cohan writes in a recent Forbes column, stiff competition caused Kodak to lay off 19,900 workers in 1999. Another, 4,500 workers were let go in January 2009.

More than cheap film, the emergence of digital photography is what really killed Kodak's business. Ironically, Kodak invented digital photography back in 1975. Unfortunately, for them, they have not been able to leverage the technology in a profitable way. Memory cards simply don't offer the same kind of margins as film. Today, when people snap away on their smart-phones and post the pics to the Internet, there's no money to be made for Kodak.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/picture-kodak-not-pretty-161831444.html

[Sassy]

Sad to say...Kodak brought this on themselves.

[dustup]

Sad to say...Kodak brought this on themselves.

Yep! Too smart for their own profits........

"Since the mid-1970s, Kodak has invented several solid-state image sensors that "converted light to digital pictures" for professional and home consumer use. In 1986, Kodak scientists invented the world's first megapixel sensor, capable of recording 1.4 million pixels that could produce a 5x7-inch digital photo-quality print. In 1987, Kodak released seven products for recording, storing, manipulating, transmitting and printing electronic still video images. In 1990, Kodak developed the Photo CD system and proposed "the first worldwide standard for defining color in the digital environment of computers and computer peripherals." In 1991, Kodak released the first professional digital camera system (DCS), aimed at photojournalists. It was a Nikon F-3 camera equipped by Kodak with a 1.3 megapixel sensor.

The first digital cameras for the consumer-level market that worked with a home computer via a serial cable were the Apple QuickTake 100 camera (February 17 , 1994), the Kodak DC40 camera (March 28, 1995), the Casio QV-11 (with LCD monitor, late 1995), and Sony's Cyber-Shot Digital Still Camera (1996).

However, Kodak entered into an aggressive co-marketing campaign to promote the DC40 and to help introduce the idea of digital photography to the public. Kinko's and Microsoft both collaborated with Kodak to create digital image-making software workstations and kiosks which allowed customers to produce Photo CD Discs and photographs, and add digital images to documents. IBM collaborated with Kodak in making an internet-based network image exchange. Hewlett-Packard was the first company to make color inkjet printers that complemented the new digital camera images."
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/bldigitalcamera.htm

[Pepsi]

have you guys seen this?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/06/21/shoot-first-focus-later-with-lytros-new-camera-tech/

this is amazing going to change things very dramatically.. if I owned Canon or Nikon stock I'd sell..

[dustup]

Sounds like a really great innovation!

[Sassy]

have you guys seen this?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2011/06/21/shoot-first-focus-later-with-lytros-new-camera-tech/

this is amazing going to change things very dramatically.. if I owned Canon or Nikon stock I'd sell..

THAT is remarkable!  I went to the link they provided to view some of the photos, which also allows you to "adjust" them.  WOW!