[Not a Number]

Interesting reading (Harvard Business Review):

Kodak?s Downfall Wasn?t About Technology

Note: the piece says Fuju survived by diversifying: branching out into magnetic tape (video, audio, data storage), copiers and business automation. Now competes in healthcare, electronics operations and document solutions.

Sound familiar?

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Last edited by Not a Number; 07-18-2019 at 10:56 AM.

[Trickortreat]

Some players will exit the market as the r&d will be just too big to maintain production or the investors will just call to change the playing field.

[Kevin B123]

And now Canon will add IBIS to DSLR's according to this article:
Canon Will 'Definitely' Add IBIS to 'Select' DSLRs Soon: Report
Very late to the game, trying to make the next gen DSLR more appealing.
This would be dangerous to Pentax, except that they will be hideously expensive in comparison.

[clackers]

And now Canon will add IBIS to DSLR's according to this article:
Canon Will 'Definitely' Add IBIS to 'Select' DSLRs Soon: Report
Very late to the game, trying to make the next gen DSLR more appealing.
This would be dangerous to Pentax, except that they will be hideously expensive in comparison.

Canon prime shooters will gain from this, almost none of them have OIS as far as I know.

[gaweidert]

Kodak invented digital image capture, but they couldn’t overcome legacy pension obligations left over from the massive chemical and film operations digital imaging replaced.

Not true. Kodak's pension plan was fully funded and at time over funded and is still in no danger of defaulting. Unlike a lot of companies, Kodak kept up their pension contributions. They also saved a lot of money by switching employees around to various subsidiaries and defaulting on promises made to them regarding their pensions. I lost about 70% of mine while those who took early buyouts are doing fine.


What they could not over come were

1) Archaic consent decrees that were imposed in the 1920's when the company was almost dismantled my the US government for being a monopoly. There were still in force into the 1990's when Kodak's market share was nowhere near monopoly trigger levels.

2) A culture where all things had to be geared to improving film sales. Anything that detracted from that was not allowed.

3) Wall Street fund managers screaming at them to divest themselves of everything but film. This after some far thinking management in the 1970's and 1980's realized that film was not going to last forever so the company needed new avenues for growth. Thing divested included diagnostic medical equipment, copiers sales and service, business products, governments systems division etc.


4) As part of trying to convert form a chemical to an electronics company they spun off Eastman Chemical Company (EMN). Their stock just closed at $77.75 today. As part of this spin off, they found that the chemicals needed to make film now cost them 30% more than before the spinoff. EMN now had shareholders to make happy so they could no longer sell the chemicals to film manufacturing at cost. This was probably one of the dumbest decisions that Kodak management ever made. They got no money by spinning off this extremely profitable part of the company.


5) And as mentioned above some really bad management decisions. I am still convinced that the last president of the company, Antonio Perez was there to disassemble it. No other explanation for why he was allowed to remain in control for as long as he did with the company performing so poorly under his management. All profitable divisions were sold while under performing ones were retained.


At least this is what I saw from inside the company over the years 1974 to 2016.


Any company that heavily invested in China is hurting right now as their economy is hurting. Canon being only one of many.

[Mistral75]

Is the camera business even a significant part of Canon's overall portfolio these days? I would be interested to know the figures.

2018

Consolidated sales: ¥3,951.9bn
Imaging System sales: ¥1,008.2 = 25.5% of consolidated sales
Imaging System \ Cameras sales: ¥599.9bn = 15.2% of consolidated sales

Consolidated operating profit: ¥343bn (8.7% of sales)
Imaging System operating profit: ¥117bn (11.6% of sales) = 34.1% of consolidated operating profit

1Q 2019

Consolidated sales: ¥864.5bn
Imaging System sales: ¥176.3 = 20.4% of consolidated sales
Imaging System \ Cameras sales: ¥97.9bn = 11.3% of consolidated sales

Consolidated operating profit: ¥40.4bn (4.7% of sales)
Imaging System operating profit: ¥4.7bn (2.7% of sales) = 11.6% of consolidated operating profit

It's the trend that's worrying.

[tokyoscape]

what Gawetdirt said are consistent with a podcast I am listening to. They talked about how Kodak failed and interview former employees including the R&D guy who invente the first sensor which become camera's sensor we are using today.
Spectacular failure, if any one interested. Very good show.
Nokia might be another good one for them.

The impression I get after the show was expressed in my very first post. Those making decision were unwilling to change their business focus another words, too slow to adapt to the change, too comfortable to be in where / market they are in. Their reactions to the change were too little, too late, and it distroied the great company.

[Rondec]

what Gawetdirt said are consistent with a podcast I am listening to. They talked about how Kodak failed and interview former employees including the R&D guy who invente the first sensor which become camera's sensor we are using today.
Spectacular failure, if any one interested. Very good show.
Nokia might be another good one for them.

The impression I get after the show was expressed in my very first post. Those making decision were unwilling to change their business focus another words, too slow to adapt to the change, too comfortable to be in where / market they are in. Their reactions to the change were too little, too late, and it distroied the great company.

I think the thing is that Kodak gets trotted out as an example of a company that wouldn't change and so fell apart. But there were many things that played into their failure. They actually had a large number of patents and if they had just leveraged those, they could certainly have had more of a foot hold in digital photography.

At the same time, most of the digital camera brands today began as lens makers and moved from there. Somehow that seems easier than building a sensor and camera body and then trying to figure out the glass after the fact.

Either way, Canon isn't Kodak and they will likely keep a decent market share, albeit of a much smaller overall market.

[Ontarian50]

I think the thing is that Kodak gets trotted out as an example of a company that wouldn't change and so fell apart. But there were many things that played into their failure. They actually had a large number of patents and if they had just leveraged those, they could certainly have had more of a foot hold in digital photography.

The trouble with patents is that they eventually expire. For the first decade or so of the digital photography era, Kodak did pretty well with their "foothold". But while many regular consumers were aware of digital cameras before 2001, few actually had owned one or tried one. In the few years after that ... well ... things just exploded.

From 1991 to 2001, however, Kodak kept plugging away at their DCS bodies, priced astronomically high. The DCS 420 I have in my display case cost $13,000 in 1998. The next year Nikon brought out the D1, at less than half that price - and even though the D1 is a dinosoar today, it totally outclassed the DCS 420. No, I've never tried one of the mega-dollar DCS 700 series, but at what they cost, few have.

But if you got your picture taken for a security badge in the late '90s, there's a good chance the personnel department used a Kodak DC40 "hamburger style" digital camera that replaced their Polaroid. If you were a real estate agent needing basic snaps to drop into your listings, you likely replaced your Polaroid with a Kodak DC220. If you started dabbling in eBay in 1999 or so, you may have got a cheap Kodak DC3200 with a whole megapixel of quality for your online pictures. Of course, Sony was also there with their Mavicas, with the handy feature of being able to stuff the floppy right into your computer - no serial cable or drivers required!

But all those Kodaks mentioned say "Made in Japan" on the bottom (no China then).

As mentioned above, Kodak had long decided that being a powerhouse camera manufacturer was not for them. Sure, in the early 20th century it was important for Kodak to get a camera into the hands of as many consumers as possible, and so they made a huge variety of cameras back then, and bought up lots of smaller companies to add to their dominance. Germans make good cameras, fine, then buy up the Nagel Werke and rebadge them as Kodak Retina, made in Germany. With Germany cut off during the war, Kodak stepped up and made some very fine things at home, like the Medalist, and Ektra - and then went back to Retinas after the war.

But after those faded away in the '60s, Kodak was happy to sell basic instamatics, and eventually (shudder) disc cameras. And Kodak no longer had to worry about consumers having access to cameras any more - everyone made them at all quality levels. But the one common denominator between the cheapest instamatic and the finest Pentax SLR was they both used Kodak film. Making film and its related chemistry and spinoffs was what made Kodak happy. Even electronic images were supposed to mesh into that business model. We have to remember that for that first decade of digital photography, most computer monitors and laptop screens were pretty low rez, with limited colour. If you took a good digital pic, you wanted it printed - or so we thought.

Nowadays, with jillions of digital pics being snapped every hour, there's no room on earth to print them all, and besides, they look big and great on our 4k displays.

I feel for Kodak. But I don't know how things could have played out any differently. Even if they had kept this division, closed down that one, invested more in this, less in that, I still think Sony and Apple would end up the biggest players by now. Although, was there a time when Kodak could have bought Apple?

[normhead]

Although, was there a time when Kodak could have bought Apple?

Apple never had less than about a 2 billion reserve fund in recent history, even in their darkest days, to fight off such attempts.

Their current reserve fund is over 100 billion.

When Kodak could have bought it, it was still owned by Steve Jobs, and he wouldn't have sold it.

[c.a.m]

This talk about Kodak reminds of this:

You Tube

You Tube