Could have Kodak saved itself by going Micro Four Thirds?

[Avotius]

I was pondering this the other day, and I hope no on else has already been on about this.

Could have Kodak saved something of its camera division by not foolishly making point and shoots no one bought and instead joined m4/3 standard and produced lenses or cameras?

Obviously they had the lines to make many different point and shoots so it would seem to reason that they could have consolidated that into making a m4/3 body. Kodak knows how to make a good sensor as the enthusiast and pro marks know. They licence Rodenstock lens tech and so on....

It just seems to me that for a company flailing about like a fish on a dock, not moving anywhere and just wasting energy on a diminishing part of the market that they could have wised up to the fact that they had to pull a Fuji and completely change their direction.

Sure tooling and such for making a new camera is expensive, but how much is tooling for a dozen different point and shoots?

Just a thought....

 

[johannielscom]

Could the dodo have survived if it had grown an interest in flying after all?

😛


Same answer: guess we'll just never know!

 

[mugent]

Maybe , but I think Kodak was never seen as a camera company in the way Nikon or Pentax was, they also made very ugly cameras, I used to work in a camera shop and it's very important, it can be an awesome camera, but if it doesn't look right, people won't buy it.
If they did go into m43, they would have to have done an outstanding job to make people look past the alternatives, just making one wouldn't be enough.

 

[f6andBthere]

Could the dodo have survived if it had grown an interest in flying after all?

😛


Same answer: guess we'll just never know!

LOL

I had a couple of Kodak digital point and shoots and I have to say they were absolute rubbish! Both died after a year or two and one had the worst lens distortion I've ever seen.

 

[bigeye]

No one has figured out how to make money in digital cameras. Fuji and Kodak both suffered about the same gross revenue loss % (~50%) in their photography products since 2008.

Fuji will survive but not as a camera or film company; they're retreating from photography as fast as they can - it's not even in their strategic plan. Their corporate goals are healthcare, documents and materials. So, you might see a "Fuji" label in your doctors office, photocopier and maybe computer screen but, I'm not sure how this relates to photography.

Kodak has followed a similar strategy, less successfully, but it doesn't matter a whit to photography whether these companies are successful healthcare or failing printer companies. Olympus has made the transition to be a successful healthcare company (that makes 1 or 2 decent cameras). I'm not sure why they bother with cameras - it's a half-assed strategy.

The DSLR market is holding and the only growth in photo use in with smartphones. (To work off that trend, Polaroid has a nifty idea, mix a 16mp P&S camera with a phone. http://www.polaroid.com/en/sc1630 But, I don't see how they can protect themselves from competition in this market, but you have to admire the pluck.)

I like tangles of cables and card readers as much as the next guy, but still don't get why the DSLR vendors haven't added wifi or cell data to their cameras...

-Charlie

 

[uinku]

No one has figured out how to make money in digital cameras. Fuji and Kodak both suffered about the same gross revenue loss % (~50%) in their photography products since 2008.

I would say that Fuji and Kodak haven't had the best of luck, but Canon and Panasonic appear to be doing pretty well. The problem is that it's a vicious market with short cycles and thin margins. And yes, cellphones are eating away at the market because the average consumer just needs something to take quick snaps of food, pets, and people.

It's interesting to see how Polaroid will fair with its new digital instant camera.

Going back to the original question.. I realize that Kodak produced some of the earlier digital sensors. If they had focused on this 100%, they might still be around as a sensor company, but that would've meant massive layouts and a complete change of direction. The reason why Samsung is rising up so quickly is because it was already heavily invested in semi-conductor technology.

 

[btgc]

How m43 cameras would be going to help company with same management ?
Lead ship to same rocks just from slightly different angle?

 

[jsrockit]

Fuji will survive but not as a camera or film company; they're retreating from photography as fast as they can - it's not even in their strategic plan.

Then why do they keep releasing products and roadmaps for the future? I know photography is no longer its main focus, but they don't appear to be "retreating from photography as fast as they can."

 

[dreilly]

Fuji will survive but not as a camera or film company; they're retreating from photography as fast as they can

Charlie,
Is that accurate? I mean, they're introducing a whole new digital system, and just recently released a medium format film camera with Cosina. They seem to be pretty involved in small 35mm point and shoots for the domestic market.

You're right though that cameras seem to be an afterthought at the global corporate level. In Japan I was amazed that I pooped in more things labelled Panasonic than I saw the name on cameras (someone needs to do a features comparison between their toilet line and m4/3 cameras!), Ricoh is a copier company but at least seems to recognize that their photographic dabblings are just that by designing and marketing absurd cameras that just happen to work really well. Canon and Nikon are the big camera companies, but are the least innovative in terms of pushing into new territory. The 1 series looks like it's designed specifically to be very far away from a DSLR so nobody gets confused.

Fascinating market to observe and speculate on!

Kodak and m4/3. Not sure the the limitations of the CCD sensor meshed well with the smaller real estate. I like the CDD in the M8, but a CMOS seems to do much better in the same amount of sensor space, at least at the higher ISOs. And yeah, higher ISOs are not everything, but it's been a weak point in the m4/3 line.

Kodak was its own worst enemy. Compare it to Fuji, the other film giant that went through the digital transition. They even started off in a similar way, making digital bodies around Nikon film camera carcasses. But Fuji aggressively fought in the high-quality P&S market while Kodak's camera offerings went through this disturbing devolution to even stupider designs.

 

[divewizard]

Kodak has been horribly mismanaged for many years. No one product choice would have fixed that. The company has been in decline for 30 years. It started long before the advent of digital cameras.
Much of their business was industrial applications such as microfilm archiving, chemicals, & industrial components.

 

[joeswe]

The Scale of Kodak's Rise and Fall

 

[bsdunek]

The Scale of Kodak's Rise and Fall - I think this is more on target than so much of the bashing that's going on.
Also - that polaroid that prints photos is really neat. Don't know how successful it will be, but pretty neat.

 

[jsrockit]

Ut oh...

"The fact is the millions and millions of dollars once spent on film, processing, and prints is now all-but gone. Just as Kodak enjoyed the majority of those revenues for decades, it now bears the biggest brunt of their loss. [Of course Kodak is not alone in feeling this loss.]"

 

[shadowfox]

Or Kodak could have continued to improve their sensors, partner with Nikon or Canon to periodically release a limited "demo" camera editions models that showcase their sensors.

Keep people excited about the sensor and let camera manufacturers fall over themselves trying to get a hold of those sensors for their upcoming cameras.




Of course I personally just prefer Kodak to keep making film and papers. Yes it needs to downsize from it's lofty bloated self, but hey, losing weight almost always means a healthier body.

 

[anjoca76]

I'm about the last person to know how to fix a company, but it seems to me that there is still enough interest in film out there, and enough pride in traditional American brands, that Kodak should be able to take advantage and profit from it. I am a musician and have been trying to "make it" for years, and the biggest obstacle I, and every other no-name musician out there, faces is lack of name recognition. Kodak has that in *****s. And, at least in my opinion, it still makes excellent films. But they seem to lack any sort of vision or ability to tap into that. The comparison isn't quite fair, but look at the US car industry. No one ever thought they could bounce back, but they have indeed.

Kodak has a lot going against it, and I would never suggest that they can regain their dominance by catering to those of us here at RFF (many of whom prefer non-Kodak products anyway) but they can certainly do a better job than they are now. I never get the impression that they try to reach out to use film users, or even try to reach out to a younger generation that may want to explore this great world of film photography. I don't care what anyone says, there is a charm and an art to shooting film that cannot be found in the digital realm--or at least a different charm and artistic value than digital--and it sucks to see it slip away.

Maybe I'm just being nostalgic or shortsighted. Maybe I'm just sad to see a once-thriving company, who happens to make my favorite films, teeter on the verge of irrelevancy.

 

[bigeye]

Then why do they keep releasing products and roadmaps for the future? I know photography is no longer its main focus, but they don't appear to be "retreating from photography as fast as they can."

These products are a very tiny bit of revenue that has to support a large company. I'm not a seer in this stuff, I'm just going by fujifilm's finances and strategic plans.

Digital product sales have only grown 5% in 4 years in a division that has lost 53% of its sales revenue since 2006. (Very similar to Kodak in this space.)

Is that accurate? I mean, they're introducing a whole new digital system, and just recently released a medium format film camera with Cosina. They seem to be pretty involved in small 35mm point and shoots for the domestic market.

You're right though that cameras seem to be an afterthought at the global corporate level.

Check fujifilm's "2010 & Thereafter" - Corporate Transformation and 2013 Medium term plan.

I doubt that Fuji will abandon photography (digital/film), it's just going to be a shrinking, less dangerous component of revenue (it's gone from 19% to 14% of their business within the steep decline experienced by of all their divisions in last 4 years).

A reasonable guess would be that imaging will become a "pet/hobby" group, like Olympus' camera division(?) Who knows? It's is a very, very bad thing to kill a brand if you can avoid it.

- Charlie

 

[annasu]

Kodak has announced they are to “phase out” digital capture devices, including digital cameras, digital camcorders (like FLIP) and digital photo frames. They had some nice bridge / ultra zoom cameras such as the , Kodak Easyshare Z980 and Z990 Max and we’d expect the price of them to be dropping or on sale as retailers try to clear dead stock. Kodak say they will honour all warranties, which is useful, as we found they had the highest number of faulty cameras on ebay when we investigated. We opinioned about Kodak recently here, they are known for going a long way back in film and film cameras (ironically film will continue), and even invented the world first digital camera.