Kodak Goes On The Offensive Against Digital Film
from the not-on-their-watch? dept
Six years ago I (with two others) wrote up a detailed analysis of what was going to happen to Kodak’s film sales business due to the coming prominence of digital snapshot cameras (and eventually digital cameras for professional photographers). People at Kodak who saw it said that while all of our research was sound, and the conclusions made sense, they didn’t believe it would happen. They thought most photographers would never become comfortable with digital pictures. It looks like they’re losing that battle. Now, they’re going to lose the battle with filmmakers who are increasingly moving to shooting with digital cameras. Kodak is trying to fight back by saying that digital isn’t as good as regular film. This seems like a classic disruptive technology innovation. Sure, digital isn’t as good as film for some things, but it’s good enough for many things, and it’s only getting better (which fits in with the classic disruptive technology curve). It also has some advantages over film (such as being able to watch what you’ve filmed right away). Kodak can fight back with words all they want, but they’re going to have to do something before more of their business is wiped out from under them.
Comments on “Kodak Goes On The Offensive Against Digital Film”
They've already prepared
Kodak already sells IT systems for digitally stored medical images — they bought out a company called Cemax-Ikon. I used to work there.
That said, Kodak does seem to be a classic case of a too-big company with too many PhD’s in it, with their headquarters in some out-of-way place isolated from the real world. They’re like IBM or Bell — they’ve evolved out of being a real business into being a quasi-think thank, amorphous uber-company.
No Subject Given
I know that I take a lot more pictures with my digital camera than I ever did with a film camera. Kodak just needs to figure out where the money is in the new model.