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Kodak’s researchers invented digital photography and put the technology in professional cameras in the 1990s. There were plans to move to digital consumer camer

Kodak’s researchers invented digital photography and put the technology in professional cameras in the 1990s. There were plans to move to digital consumer cameras, but the cash Kodak made on traditional photography made it complacent. Wow, talk about fumbling the future. I guess they didn't read Clayton Christensen. Disrupt yourself, or someone else will save you the trouble.

porsupah 12y ago
But, they did try: http://www.steves-digicams.com/camera-reviews/kodak/ http://www.steves-digicams.com/camera-reviews/kodak/ My understanding is, however, that they simply weren't all that noteworthy. Also, bear in mind the degree of pivot required - it's not merely a shift in strategy, but a fundamental transformation, from developing films, into developing entire electronic devices, with all the entirely new skills required in industrial design, UI, and so forth. It can, of course, be done - Fujifilm has managed to continue in the digital photography sector, although they were rather more broadly based to begin with. Similarly, Nikon and Canon were already acquainted with what was necessary in a DSLR, and were able to transition to the digital world with aplomb. To provide some context, consider this rec.photo thread from 1990, on the future of photography: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.photo/ZnqcQVzAln0 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.photo/ZnqcQVzAln...
- ghaff 12y ago
  > Fujifilm has managed to continue in the digital photography sector, although they were rather more broadly based to begin with Well, they really became broader based in large part when they saw film was going to decline and branched into areas where they could apply their film expertise outside of photography. See e.g. http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how-fujifilm-survived http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how-fujifi... They do sell cameras today. (Nice ones; I own one.) But it's a relatively niche business. (And even so they struggled. Film sales absolutely fell off a cliff.)
- Tuna-Fish 12y ago
  >> To provide some context, consider this rec.photo thread from 1990, on the future of photography: > Right now, 1 Megabyte of memory costs about $45 retail. This will not drop by an order of magnitude in the next decade without a breakthrough, or an economical Gallium-Arsenide process to replace Silicon. Hmm.
  - semi-extrinsic 12y ago
    Fortunately the storage business has been ripe with technological breakthroughs since 1990, both for spinning rust and solid state memory. See e.g. the Nobel prize in physics in 2007. I still have my 8MB CF card that cost $40, I think that was around 2000, so for solid state the past 15 years have been insanely good.
  - paul 12y ago
    That rec.photos thread is great. I love reading old predictions. For some reason many of them got hung up on the idea that there would be crazy compression schemes that eliminate all the creative parts of photos. > O.K. Chemical films can presently store more information than any reasonable digital image-getter can. However, digital may be possible if one has a wristwatch-sized supercomputer doing various shades of image/abberation recognition capable of replacing the actual information with some sort of 'tokenized' equivalent of the original image. Fine. Such data compression/ reduction techniques may alow you to have your little computer-camera. > But wat if you want those abberations, or if you want that blur for that action shot, or if you want that sun/iris flare for a neato scenic shot, or if you want to use some weird lighting effects? Then you are s.o.l. By having the camera identify/correct (tokenize) and remove all of the possible artifacts of using a real-world camera (which is the only way that such a camera is possible), you will also eliminate almost all of your creative power.
    - lfam 12y ago
      Sounds like some complaints about digital audio compression schemes.
- rdtsc 12y ago
  Yap. Remember my first digital camera was a Kodak. It wasn't very good compared to others during that time.
joezydeco 12y ago
They did market a line of digital consumer cameras, contrary to what the article says. The first was the QuickTake series, done in conjunction with...wait for it...Apple. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake
- starik36 12y ago
  Exactly... And it wasn't bad. I owned one. But they got eclipsed by camera phones and that was the end of that. Hindsight being 20/20, they probably should have focused on selling constituent parts of the camera to phone manufacturers (like Sony does with lenses for iPhone).
ghaff 12y ago
As others have noted, they did try in a number of ways--including coming out with a (probably too early) product to allow consumers to view scanned photos on their TV. (Also healthcare, photocopiers, etc.) When the sales of your main product--which is a wonderful consumables business and basically owns the world market outside of Japan--drop 98 percent in about 10 years you've got a really tough problem however many business strategy books you read.
shas3 12y ago
Digital cameras very quickly became a commodity. The underlying technology is very scalable and it is harder to distinguish oneself in this space. I think a more apt analogy is film vs. CCD, rather than film camera vs. digital camera. Kodak was a films company, not necessarily a camera company. In that sense, Kodak is (was?) a manufacturing company, with strength in manufacturing films, etc. Would Kodak have the same competitive advantages if it switched to manufacturing CCD arrays? Probably not... The nature of the sensors are so different. In hindsight, they probably lost the game much before the advent of digicams. Some decision at some point in 1970s or 1980s, Kodak executives/management probably decided against diversifying. Edit: Sure enough, found an article that talks about how Fujifilm continues to thrive: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203750404577170481473958516 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702037504045771704... Answer: Diversification. Quoting the article: > What Fujifilm did was to look further than simply moving to digital photography from analog. Instead, the company tapped its chemical expertise for broader uses, such as drugs and liquid-crystal display panels. Cosmetics, as well: It seems the process for stopping photos from fading can be used on skin, too. > "The most decisive factor [for our success] was how drastically we were able to transform our businesses when digitalization occurred," Mr. Komori said. What set Fujifilm apart from Kodak, he said, was the Japanese company's effort to branch out by employing technologies originally developed for photography. > And one of Fujifilm's latest endeavors is cosmetics—it has its own Astalift skin-care line—that use antioxidation technology for preventing photos from fading. >The company also has spent ¥650 billion since 2000 to acquire health-care companies. Fujifilm acquired midsize drug maker Toyama Chemical Co. for $1.4 billion in 2008 and last month agreed to buy U.S. medical-equipment maker SonoSite Inc. for $995 million.
- joezydeco 12y ago
  "Some decision at some point in 1970s or 1980s, Kodak executives/management probably decided against diversifying." In that era Kodak was diversified in areas such as pharmaceuticals, medical diagnostics, thin-film coatings, and industrial chemicals. They've all been spun out or sold off, starting in the early 1990s.

porsupah 12y ago

But, they did try: http://www.steves-digicams.com/camera-reviews/kodak/ http://www.steves-digicams.com/camera-reviews/kodak/ My understanding is, however, that they simply weren't all that noteworthy. Also, bear in mind the degree of pivot required - it's not merely a shift in strategy, but a fundamental transformation, from developing films, into developing entire electronic devices, with all the entirely new skills required in industrial design, UI, and so forth. It can, of course, be done - Fujifilm has managed to continue in the digital photography sector, although they were rather more broadly based to begin with. Similarly, Nikon and Canon were already acquainted with what was necessary in a DSLR, and were able to transition to the digital world with aplomb. To provide some context, consider this rec.photo thread from 1990, on the future of photography: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.photo/ZnqcQVzAln0 https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.photo/ZnqcQVzAln...

ghaff 12y ago
> Fujifilm has managed to continue in the digital photography sector, although they were rather more broadly based to begin with Well, they really became broader based in large part when they saw film was going to decline and branched into areas where they could apply their film expertise outside of photography. See e.g. http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how-fujifilm-survived http://www.economist.com/blogs/schumpeter/2012/01/how-fujifi... They do sell cameras today. (Nice ones; I own one.) But it's a relatively niche business. (And even so they struggled. Film sales absolutely fell off a cliff.)
Tuna-Fish 12y ago
>> To provide some context, consider this rec.photo thread from 1990, on the future of photography: > Right now, 1 Megabyte of memory costs about $45 retail. This will not drop by an order of magnitude in the next decade without a breakthrough, or an economical Gallium-Arsenide process to replace Silicon. Hmm.
- semi-extrinsic 12y ago
  Fortunately the storage business has been ripe with technological breakthroughs since 1990, both for spinning rust and solid state memory. See e.g. the Nobel prize in physics in 2007. I still have my 8MB CF card that cost $40, I think that was around 2000, so for solid state the past 15 years have been insanely good.
- paul 12y ago
  That rec.photos thread is great. I love reading old predictions. For some reason many of them got hung up on the idea that there would be crazy compression schemes that eliminate all the creative parts of photos. > O.K. Chemical films can presently store more information than any reasonable digital image-getter can. However, digital may be possible if one has a wristwatch-sized supercomputer doing various shades of image/abberation recognition capable of replacing the actual information with some sort of 'tokenized' equivalent of the original image. Fine. Such data compression/ reduction techniques may alow you to have your little computer-camera. > But wat if you want those abberations, or if you want that blur for that action shot, or if you want that sun/iris flare for a neato scenic shot, or if you want to use some weird lighting effects? Then you are s.o.l. By having the camera identify/correct (tokenize) and remove all of the possible artifacts of using a real-world camera (which is the only way that such a camera is possible), you will also eliminate almost all of your creative power.
  - lfam 12y ago
    Sounds like some complaints about digital audio compression schemes.
rdtsc 12y ago
Yap. Remember my first digital camera was a Kodak. It wasn't very good compared to others during that time.

joezydeco 12y ago

They did market a line of digital consumer cameras, contrary to what the article says. The first was the QuickTake series, done in conjunction with...wait for it...Apple. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake

starik36 12y ago
Exactly... And it wasn't bad. I owned one. But they got eclipsed by camera phones and that was the end of that. Hindsight being 20/20, they probably should have focused on selling constituent parts of the camera to phone manufacturers (like Sony does with lenses for iPhone).

ghaff 12y ago

As others have noted, they did try in a number of ways--including coming out with a (probably too early) product to allow consumers to view scanned photos on their TV. (Also healthcare, photocopiers, etc.) When the sales of your main product--which is a wonderful consumables business and basically owns the world market outside of Japan--drop 98 percent in about 10 years you've got a really tough problem however many business strategy books you read.

shas3 12y ago

Digital cameras very quickly became a commodity. The underlying technology is very scalable and it is harder to distinguish oneself in this space. I think a more apt analogy is film vs. CCD, rather than film camera vs. digital camera. Kodak was a films company, not necessarily a camera company. In that sense, Kodak is (was?) a manufacturing company, with strength in manufacturing films, etc. Would Kodak have the same competitive advantages if it switched to manufacturing CCD arrays? Probably not... The nature of the sensors are so different. In hindsight, they probably lost the game much before the advent of digicams. Some decision at some point in 1970s or 1980s, Kodak executives/management probably decided against diversifying. Edit: Sure enough, found an article that talks about how Fujifilm continues to thrive: http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052970203750404577170481473958516 http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702037504045771704... Answer: Diversification. Quoting the article: > What Fujifilm did was to look further than simply moving to digital photography from analog. Instead, the company tapped its chemical expertise for broader uses, such as drugs and liquid-crystal display panels. Cosmetics, as well: It seems the process for stopping photos from fading can be used on skin, too. > "The most decisive factor [for our success] was how drastically we were able to transform our businesses when digitalization occurred," Mr. Komori said. What set Fujifilm apart from Kodak, he said, was the Japanese company's effort to branch out by employing technologies originally developed for photography. > And one of Fujifilm's latest endeavors is cosmetics—it has its own Astalift skin-care line—that use antioxidation technology for preventing photos from fading. >The company also has spent ¥650 billion since 2000 to acquire health-care companies. Fujifilm acquired midsize drug maker Toyama Chemical Co. for $1.4 billion in 2008 and last month agreed to buy U.S. medical-equipment maker SonoSite Inc. for $995 million.

joezydeco 12y ago
"Some decision at some point in 1970s or 1980s, Kodak executives/management probably decided against diversifying." In that era Kodak was diversified in areas such as pharmaceuticals, medical diagnostics, thin-film coatings, and industrial chemicals. They've all been spun out or sold off, starting in the early 1990s.