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Polaroid Can't Compete with Digital Cameras
mobydobius was among several who noted that poloroid can't keep up in the era of digital cameras. They filed for chapter 11, and have a billion dollars of debt. This deal gets them a bit of cash, but none of this seems surprising considering the cost of their instant film. In just a few short years, digital cameras knocked 'em down. There's a lesson here, but I think it's something like "Don't eat the Yellow Snow".
...the fact that Polaroid images are very grainy and crappy and you really can't ge a Polaroid camera that produces a good image.
So really it's like, you're paying a ton of money to replicat what you can do with a disposable camera and 1 hour film developing.
Polaroid made some of the best advances in providing instant photos, but that was back during their golden years. Digital cameras entered the market a few years ago, also providing instant photos, and Polaroid acted like they werent there.
Digital beat Polaroid in the fact that Polaroid's photos never really improved over the years. The cameras lacked good zoom lenses, quality never improved, lighting was an issue, each photo was an expensive $1/print, not to mention sheer size of the cameras meant it was tough to carry around.
Digital, OTOH, has zoom, high quality photos, adjusts for lighting problems, and have hardly any cost per photo.
IMO, Polaroid's downfall was their failure to further develop their camera to compete with the modern world. Their only major advancement was in providing fancy party borders to photos.
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I hate to say it like that because it seems so callouse but I don't think anyone will feel sympathetic with horse ranchers enough to stop buying cars or gasoline.
There are a lot of technologies that we have outgrown right? Polaroid still serves some purpose that only polaroid technologies can address. Using a Polaroid usually indicates that the photo hasn't been tampered with and serves as good proof in some areas.
I hope they can strategize a way to come back.
They have always been a one-trick pony. Instant cameras and film were it for them, and everything else was just a little sideline.
Many moons ago Polaroid sued the pants off of Kodak for patent infringement, winning back exclusive rights to "instant" film and cameras as well as a good chunk of cash.
Their corporate culture didn't allow them to recognize that the "instant" film market, their baby, had reached the end of its lifespan.
Times had changed and Polaroid didn't change with them. They never gave more than a nod to anything other than their heritage.
Those who insist on living in the past have no place in the future.
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About 15 years ago I was in a B-school class that did a case study on Polaroid. They were in trouble then because Kodak's SX-70 instant-picture technology that didn't require user intervention or a wastebasket had obviated Polaroid's 35-year-old watch-your-watch system. Their newer systems didn't quite have the technical quality of Kodak's, and their product design was laughable. But they were clearly survivors, because they should have been dead then, not now.
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People are looking at this through their geek googles. You've drank too much Slashdot!
Polaroid isn't necessarily suffering because of technology change, technological innovation, or anything else that geeks care about. Polariod could be in trouble because of more mundane "old business" reasons, such as lack of innovation, not focusing on core competencies, out of control costs, poor management, and so forth. Sure, these things might be related to technology, but I think it is silly to blame only technology for their problems.
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This is one of the things that, say, Scott McNealy would point out as a "disruptive technology". Digital Cameras came, and Polaroid didn't change.
For the consumer, the choice was almost obvious. Do you want buy a camera, and have to pay for film all the time, or do you want a more expensive camera that takes "free pictures"? (Okay, not quite free, but very close.)
Customers don't like the pay-per-use model. They hate it. Anything that moves away from that will win consumers. You see this happen over and over again. Companies need to latch onto this and embrace it.
I feel bad for Polaroid, but it is really a win for us that technology has managed to create something better that has succeeded in the marketplace.
Polaroid is really a victim of their own patents.
The cornerstone for Polaroid's business was their patents on instant film technology. No other company could compete in that market because of it. When Kodak attempted to enter the market in the 1970's, Poloroid stopped them, as they were violating their patents.
Because they had no competition, they didn't diversify. Actually they did, but it was too little, too late. Sure, they add low end 35mm cameras, 35mm film and digital cameras to their product line, but they couldn't establish a leadership role in any of these market segments. They still relied on their instant film business as a core.
New technology killed their own older, proprietory technology. Had they tried to embrace other technologies earlier (like been in the 35mm market about 10 years before) they might have build enough diversity on "open" technology to carry them through the predictable demise of their proprietory technology.
Polaroid should be a lesson for other technology companies: continue to innovate or else!
Polaroid did pioneer instant photography. Dr. Edwin Land had the 2nd largest number of patents assigned to him personally in the US. Polaroid was the prototypical high-tech startup that pioneered a new market. They *owned* the instant film market.
Ironically Polaroid also did much of the early work on digital photography and held a number of early patents. They could have rolled out digital cameras long ago but feared cannibalizing their existing markets. So they stayed with the tried-and-true and eventually became irrelevant.
Polaroid was also the classic engineering-run company. Never did market studies. Never did usability testing. Never attempted to create a design identity. If anything they were known for the incredibly clever & complex folding of their cameras (the awesome chemistry was hidden.)
They did try to branch out a bit. In the late 70's they introduced "Polavision", their instant movie system which bombed in a big way. In the recriminations Dr. Land "moved on" and Polaroid was left to continue the course he had left it on, never to really change significantly afterwards.
Oh, they came out with kiddie cameras and cheap cameras and cameras that printed to stickers. Some were decent successes but nothing really ground shaking. Other companies slowly but steadily took away their drivers-license photos and other markets with alternative technologies. For the past few years there've been promises of a new line in digital photography but many of the proposed products are dubious (dual instant-photo with a digital copy?) and all are vapor still.
Polaroid does have about 2 billion in assets - properties, patents, plants, contracts, etc. Their employees have all been aware of what has been happening and even in a company famous for dedication folks have been jumping ship for the past few years. The retirees are all up in arms and are likely screwed as their benefits are tied up in the company.
Lessons? Don't stop innovating. Don't define yourself as "The Something Company". Complete domination of your market is only important as long as your market is unique. Don't rely only on completely amazing technology to sell your product; you need to identify, listen-to & cultivate your customers.
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I don't know why I feel so indifferent about this. Maybe its because I have an Uncle who worked for Kodak (in Rochester NY). I remember when I was about age 11 or so, He was telling me how Kodak lost their battle in court to continue making their Instamatic (sp?) cameras. Polariod has a history of trying to edge out competition, just like any other corporation. If they can't keep up, hey, what goes around...
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Poloroid has never been in the self-developing photograph business. Nobody wants self-developing photographs. People want instant photographs, and Poloroid has been in the instant photography business for ages now.
Digital photography also provides instant photographs, so Poloroid has new competition.
This is exactly what happened to the "rail" industry. "Rail" companies were and are railroads in the freight hauling business and the passenger transportation business. Because they thought of themselves as a rail business, they didn't invest heavily in the new technologies of tractor-trailer trucks, coach bussing, and passenger airliners. As such, they saw their market failing, when what was happening was that their market was working quite well--serviced by companies which invested in new technologies.
A word to the suits. The market you are in is not the technology you sell or use, but the benefit you give your customers. You're not in the rail business, you're in the freight business. You're not in the pinball business, you're in the arcade entertainment business. You're not in the floppy disk business, you're in the removable media business.
Companies that understood this survived the tractor-trailer, the video game, and the CD-RW. Those that didn't have gone the way of the dodo.
--The basis of all love is respect
No no no. Your first part is correct, but the second part is all wrong:
Me: TAKE A LOOK AT THESE SENATOR!
*Neema gently places digital camera on desk, so it doesn't break*
Senator: Yeah, my daughter has one of these.
<snip>
*Grabs camera, scrolls to incriminating pictures*
Me: THERE YOU ARE! YOU, DANCING THE FORBIDDEN DANCE WITH THE FORBIDDEN MONKEY!
Senator: That looks like something my daughter did with Photoshop.
Me: Yeah, well, I'm going to stop by staples to get glossy photo paper and I'll be printing out a bunch of these!
*Senator looks dubious*
The digital was untouched and the polaroid took 405 pics before we ran out of film.
Polaroids are instant (no shutter lag), give you a hard, permanent picture within seconds.
This is key for some uses. I'm thinking of a community theater, where we would hold auditions and more than a hundred people would show up. For those who didn't bring head shots, we'd take one quickly, and have it for the director and staff to use almost immediately. If he needed it the next day, or even just "on file for reference," a digital camera would have been just fine or better (cheaper), but not for immediate use.
There is a market here: a cheap, small, self-contained printer for digital cameras (or, best, for digital images in general). I bet we'll see these come out (if they aren't already), and I also bet that at first we'll see them mostly as accessories to individual specific cameras. Ideally, what I'd love to see is all digital cameras use to moving (say) compact flash cards for storage, and then digital printers that have a simple and fast way of printing images from a built-in flash reader.
-Rob
I agree, Polaroid has made some great products for serious large-format/studio photographers and for aspiring amateurs alike (proof backs, quality color & B&W films, instant slides, etc). However, their attempts to sell colorful plastic cameras to the general public just isn't going to pay the bills anymore. I really do hope that someone picks up their serious product lines since these items will be sorely missed in the photography community.
Go down to your local Salvation Army and look around -- you'll often find a Handle kicking around. It'll be about 8 inches tall and almost rectangular, with a viewfinder and yes, most have a crank on the side -- hence the name. It has all the quality feeling of an Instamatic.
Now go find an SX-70. Granted that it's weird in the hand, but it's also a by-God SLR, it collapses down to almost nothing, and it's kind of cool just to watch it unfold. It's usually brushed chrome, mine at least has leather facings, and it just feels well-made. It's no Leica, but it's not a Swinger either. Ansel Adams had one, and I don't recall his ever endorsing any other picture boxes or film.
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Hmmm, your two comments seem to contradict each other. If you're printing a 4M pixel image at 8x10 that would give you roughly 215dpi. I thought anything that low resolution didn't look like a photo?!
Also, supposedly prints from a photo lab give prints that are approximately 300dpi. How is a photo printer going to be worse quality (at least in terms of resolution)?
I think you misjudge the actual (print) resolution required to get photo quality results.
That's not saying that photo printers (and prints) are inexpensive and/or have high quality, since I have not seen the quality myself, but from resolution alone 300dpi sounds okay to me.
Polaroid thought they were in the instant camera business, when they were really in the camera business.
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In which case she was probably going to be outta luck. The cinema has been headed digital for both production and distribution for years. While there is some purpose to learning the old technology nobody uses super 8 film for quality purposes.
The market for professional film is nowhere near big enough to support a company the size of Polaroid. The Professional and serious amateur market for film is negligible compared to the market for holiday snaps. Polaroid's share of the professional market was much smaller proportionately than that of Kodak or Fuji. For a start you have to use a medium or large format camera.
The only part of the professional market that uses film in quantities big enough to support major corporations has been movies. A movie camera eats 12 35 mm snaps worth of film a second. To make an hour of movie takes ten hours (at least) of film stock.
The shift at the moment is on the production side. Digital editing has been arround for some time. Directors like Lucas have been moving towards shooting with digital cameras. While some directors will stick with film for years the bulk of the market will go digital. Remember that a bad movie takes as much film stock to shoot it as an art house flick. The transition will be complete in three to five years time when low cost digital projectors become available. The $10K cost of striking a print is what keeps many makers of celluloid film in business.
There will always be people who have to bore us with the reasons why celluloid was better. Just as there are still bores who will explain at inordinate length why vinyl is better than CD or why gas light is much better than electricity.
Recently I talked to an audiophile type who went on for hours about the spiffy new CD player he had bought for several thousand dollars which allegedly had a precision made drive that rotated the CD at exactly the 'right' rate. As if the circuitry feeding the D2A converter would be affected by the rate at which the input buffer was filled.
The fact is that within a couple more generations the top end digital cameras will outstrip the resolution of 35 mm film. There are also interesting possibilities for configuring digital film that are impossible with analog, logarithmic response to light for example giving a much greater dynamic range than the 100:1 that is possible with film.
Some celluloid use will continue, but it will be a minority even amongst the professional market.
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We must outlaw all disruptive technology!
Painting didn't disappear when photography was invented and film photography won't vanish just because digital imaging has appeared. Polaroid's problem was that they were a one-trick pony and didn't understand that digital was a better way of doing that one trick. They spent the billion dollars they got from Kodak for the instant film patent infringement lawsuit trying to design instant film products to help fight off the newer digital photography. They just didn't realize that their instant film market would die so quickly. Traditional film photography still has a lot of life to it, despite the inevitable contractions in products which are already occuring. But I believe that there are still enough of us out here who prefer film to keep it alive for a while, anyway. I don't view digital as the enemy, and most of the photographers I know don't, either. It's just another tool and some day the resolution and tonality will cheaply and conveniently rival the film equipment that I use. When it does, maybe I'll change over. Until then -- nothing matches a large format contact print. At least, nothing I can afford!
Mike
Your comment ignores the fact that if someone steals another persons car, then the original owner is out one car.
But if someone copies the original owner's CDs, the original owner still has those CDs, and has lost nothing.
You should be ashamed of yourself for not understanding this.
Similarly, you could say that the RIAA's business model is becoming outmoded-- that is, holding an expensive single-provider monopoly on the distribution of easily-duplicated bits doesn't work anymore.
The difference is that Polaroid is suffering because digital cameras are actually on the market and competing with them.
RIAA isn't really having a serious problem with competition from independant labels and musicians selling their music directly to fans. The potential is there, but it just isn't happening in very high volume yet.
What RIAA is mainly bitching about is piracy. A lot of people think piracy isn't hurting them much, and that the real reason they are buy new laws is that they want to prevent competition from developing. But they aren't really fighting existing competition yet.
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