Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Kodak Failing, But Camera Phones Not To Blame

Posted by timothy on from the all-the-world's-a-sunny-day dept.

An anonymous reader writes with this snippet from The Conversation: "According to the Wall Street Journal, camera manufacturer Kodak is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, following a long struggle to maintain any sort of viable business. The announcement has prompted some commentators to claim that Kodak's near-demise has been brought on by: a failure to innovate, or a failure to anticipate the shift from analogue to digital cameras, or a failure to compete with the rise of cameras in mobile phones. Actually, none of these claims are true. Where Kodak did fail is in not understanding what people take photographs for, and what they do with photos once they have taken them." Continues the reader: "Looking at camera data from Flickr, of images uploaded in 2011, camera phones only make up 3% of the total. Dedicated cameras from Canon, Nikon and yes, Kodak were used to take 97% of the images. What Kodak failed to understand is that people have switched from taking photos for remembering and commemorative reasons to using photos for identity and communication. The shift changes the emphasis away from print to social media platforms and dedicated apps."

21 of 309 comments (clear)

  1. Poor analysis - its film not the camera itself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Dedicated cameras from Canon, Nikon and yes, Kodak were used to take 97% of the images

    Kodak makes its money (or used to) from film, not the camera hardware itself. All those 'dedicated cameras' are busy taking shots without a single bit of negative being exposed.

    1. Re:Poor analysis - its film not the camera itself by Teancum · · Score: 5, Informative

      When the Kodak Brownie was introduced, yes, you could say that was their business model. It was successful for a great many decades too and Kodak made a pile of money off of that effort. They consumed so much silver for the production of their film that they even owned silver mines with much of the silver processed there was simply going to their own factories rather than being used for bullion or coins.

      That said, Kodak also was instrumental in developing the digital camera, invented the *.psd image format (still by far the best quality image format you can get in terms of the dynamic range of colors you can record for any computer imaging data format) and put in the engineering effort to try and change with the times.

      The sad thing is that this isn't the only photo equipment company which has suffered in terms of being relevant or even totally collapsed. The Polaroid Corporation was once a rather large company too, and now is only a marketing brand for Chinese knock-off cameras where the company itself doesn't even exist at all any more. If you look at Fujifilm, once a major competitor to Kodak, they are also struggling under the same kinds of problems and fighting for relevancy.

      All told, it really is a shift of technology on to of a shift in business models that are required to be successful. Then again Xerox had a similar kind of problem trying to stay relevant over the years, where it could have owned the PC market with the devices built at their PARC research group but instead let Apple Computer (in the form of Steve Jobs) essentially copy all of their ideas and build the Macintosh.

    2. Re:Poor analysis - its film not the camera itself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      That said, Kodak also was instrumental in developing the digital camera, invented the *.psd image format (still by far the best quality image format you can get in terms of the dynamic range of colors you can record for any computer imaging data format) and put in the engineering effort to try and change with the times.

      That was the PCD format. PSD is an Adobe/Photoshop format which is basically started out as a proprietary TIFF container to accommodate various things which make it more friendly to modern uses, but mostly as a vendor-lock-in device.

      Photo CD used a color space based on phosphors which were used in computer monitor and televisions, which is important because analog monitors can be driven in a way that they don't clip like an LCD monitor will, causing an abrupt line of brightness, (posterization) instead these areas on the monitor genuinely are whiter/brighter than normal. This makes PhotoCD images appear blown out in the highlights when viewed on modern hardware.

      So, it's not really that it's better in this regard, but simply different. This feature is woefully un-useful for print, for example. Also, for what it's worth, there are color spaces which completely blow Photo CD's color space out of the water in terms of total gamut, if not overall dynamic range, because unlike Photo CD these formats are hard limited at 100% brightness. Example: ProPhoto RGB which, incidentally, was also developed by Kodak and can record many colors which the human eye cannot see!

      Unfortunately it's mostly academic for now because few displays are capable of accurately rendering a great deal of the tonality those color spaces represent, because 1) DVI is limited to 8 bits per component, and 2) at a certain point you basically need more physical color components, like yellow and violet 'subpixels'. Example: the expensive LaCie monitors some professional designers and photographers like to use can render 100%+ of the NTSC color space, and 98% of Adobe RGB 1998, but still, the human eye can see a lot that these color spaces can't produce.

    3. Re:Poor analysis - its film not the camera itself by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      SENSOR for goodness sake!!! SENSOR, not CENSOR!
      There is no realtime censorship performed by Kodak cameras!

    4. Re:Poor analysis - its film not the camera itself by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "The only problem I see, other companies made cheaper digital cameras. "

      they made cheaper digitals that were a LOT better.

      I owned the first Canon Digital camera model, it was 35% cheaper than the equilivant from Kodak and took 800X better photographs because it had decent glass. Kodaks' offerings were using plastic lenses with the :fuzzy: effect in every shot. Even at the low resolutions of 1.2megapixel you could see the lenses on kodak cameras were garbage.

      Kodak lost because they offered garbage products.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  2. bad data source by Lehk228 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    flickr is a horrible source to do a study like this, it is going to bias towards 'real' cameras because it's more of a photography sharing site then it is a "drunken pics at the bar last night" site. mobile phones can upload photos straight to facebook and twitter

    --
    Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    1. Re:bad data source by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Interesting

      They did patent their technology, at least a lot of it. That only lasts 20 years though, so you can't be a troll forever.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:bad data source by Cimexus · · Score: 5, Informative

      True - far fewer use Flickr than Facebook. Having said that, I use Flickr for photos (despite being an avid Facebook user too), and so do most of my friends (in fact, they introduced me to Flickr originally). For me at least, it offers a number of advantages over FB:

      - It's built for photos from the ground up, rather than being a social networking site that also happens to let you upload photos. So it has a lot of useful image-specific tools that Facebook doesn't. It also has some nice geotagging features, allows you to preserve/edit/view EXIF information, proper creative-commons-based image rights controls etc.

      - Much simpler privacy controls. Basically, for each photo, it's either public (viewable at http://www.flickr.com/username by anyone - no Flickr account needed), or viewable only by Flickr friends. When sharing photos with friends and family (who may or may not have a Facebook account), it's simpler to say "go to this URL to see my photos", than it is to get them to sign up to Facebook, become my friend etc. (I know that can probably set up FB such that certain photos are visible to non-members while still hiding all the rest of my posts and information ... I haven't looked into it ... but FB's privacy controls are more complex and overkill for the task at hand. Flickr seems a simpler and more elegant solution.)

      - It's not Facebook. While I'm not saying that I 'trust' Yahoo more than I do Facebook (or any other large corporation for that matter), it can't hurt not to have all my stuff in one place, right? If Facebook suddenly suffers a major security flaw, or decides to sell everyone's data or some other evil thing, at least they won't have my photos :) (Similarly, if Flickr goes bad, they have my photos, but not any other personal info that FB has).

      - It was (and frankly, still is) a nicer site to use and navigate than FB. And it used to be kinda cool before Yahoo took it over... :(

    3. Re:bad data source by osu-neko · · Score: 5, Insightful

      flickr is a horrible source to do a study like this, it is going to bias towards 'real' cameras because it's more of a photography sharing site then it is a "drunken pics at the bar last night" site.

      For the purposes of the point being made, that's precisely why flickr is the perfect site. Kodak's market never was the "drunken pics at the bar" market. Losing a market you never had to begin with has no impact on your bottom line.

      --
      "Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
  3. Changing business by sd4f · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If business was slowing down a lot, why weren't they sacking workers and reducing expenditure? I think this is more of a failure on management to restructure the company in a way that identifies that they can't really compete in the digital age how they once used to. I think that sometimes the management just have to realise that the company can't exist like it once did, and in order for the company to remain and still employ some people, they'll have to downsize a lot more than management might be comfortable about.

    1. Re:Changing business by Isaac-1 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Kodak's decline goes back 30 years or more, I personally think it began with their ill fated Kodamatic (Polaroid clone) and having to pull it from the market after loosing a major patent infringement case to Polaroid. Since then it has been one bad move after another, does anyone remember the much hypes Kodak disc camera? The only good thing they had going was their high end multi thousand dollar CCD imager division which they completely failed to convert to market dominance in the consumer digital camera revolution. Sure their were also many background failures like not keeping up with Fuji and others in the 1-hour photo market in an attempt to maintain their major mail out photo lab processing centers, etc.

    2. Re:Changing business by phantomfive · · Score: 5, Informative

      They are filing for chapter 11 bankruptcy. That isn't going to shutdown the company. They are going to restructure it, hopefully in a way that will continue to let the company survive in the future, including doing things like downsizing.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    3. Re:Changing business by msobkow · · Score: 5, Interesting

      A decline from such heights doesn't happen overnight. It takes years of mismanagement, mistakes, failure to read the market, failure to adapt, and in this case, failure to realize that the entire market on which your business is based is going away.

      I find it interesting that Fuji in Japan was a much more diverse company, and seems to be working on Thorium Molten Salt Reactor technology based on the PROVEN trials of the 1960s. That's a pretty radical leap from Fuji's "traditional" camera market.

      A smart company invests their assets in developing new markets and new products, not tenaciously clinging to old and failing models until their last dying breath.

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    4. Re:Changing business by msobkow · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Rather than saying a company can be sunk by a single bad decision, I'd say it's one specific TYPE of bad decision: hiring the wrong executive.

      Look at NorTel in it's heyday. It was one of the top technology companies in the world; the patents sold in the bankruptcy are still very valuable.

      But they brought in a hot-shot "save the company" American executive to run the place. He laid off THOUSANDS, and many thousands more who were good resources left of their own accord in addition before the axe could fall on them. The company never did recover from the devastation of those late-80s layoffs, and continued it's decline for years afterward.

      But it wasn't a single bad decision in the sense of backing the wrong technology or the wrong business model. It was hiring a rapist to run the company.

      --
      I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
    5. Re:Changing business by jimicus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If business was slowing down a lot, why weren't they sacking workers and reducing expenditure? I think this is more of a failure on management to restructure the company in a way that identifies that they can't really compete in the digital age how they once used to. I think that sometimes the management just have to realise that the company can't exist like it once did, and in order for the company to remain and still employ some people, they'll have to downsize a lot more than management might be comfortable about.

      When you have a small company, it's pretty easy to do that. The CEO or someone very close to him visits the affected departments like the Angel of Death and when he leaves, staff levels have been cut by 40%.

      When you have a huge multi-national, it's really hard. You've got a vast number of departments spread out in all sorts of locations, employment law varies between locations (meaning you may not be able to go in and sack everyone even if you wanted to) - and even the most efficient set of management accounts is lacking in some detail. So rather than visiting like some dark angel, you carry out a full review of operations to get an idea of what departments are contributing and what departments aren't.

      Well and good, but the people directly below you didn't get that far by being stupid. They're pretty good at office politics themselves, they know which way the wind is blowing, they know what a full review of operations means, they've spent years building up their little empire. No way they're letting it go without a fight. So when the instruction comes down from on high, you can be more-or-less certain that the report that goes back will show their department to be the one thing that's keeping the company afloat. (This, BTW, is why it's quite common to hire in outside consultants or make big staffing changes at a senior level before doing these things...)

      Not to mention that such a review works great if the problem can be neatly divided in departmental lines. If it can't - if instead all your teams are contributing but none are contributing anywhere near what they need to be to keep the company afloat - things now become a lot harder.

      That's why when we hear of huge companies turning things around and improving their situation dramatically where before they looked doomed, it's really big news. IBM and Apple have done it, but as a rule it's pretty rare. It's rather more common for the numbers on the balance sheet to drop steadily over a period of time until they can no longer sustain the business - and when that happens, creditors get jumpy. Frequently they get so jumpy that there simply isn't time to go in and turn the business around, they've already asked a court to declare you bankrupt.

  4. Of course they're dying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Let's pretend the data is accurate and reliable. Kodak's core problem would remain the same: if you're business model is built on selling photographic film and paper, and people don't need that anymore, the company is going to fail.

  5. The article is weak by gzipped_tar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It first tried to rebuke the claims of Kodak being not able to innovate, etc, and then discussed "how people today use photos" in the examples of Flickr, Facebook, and such. It concluded with the weak argument of essentially one sentence, that "[It] is hard to see a role for Kodak in all of this." The problem with this reasoning is that exactly the same thing can be said about many of Kodak's competitors. I'm not aware whether Nikon or Canon is doing significantly better in this regard, which is to ease the "sharing and distribution" of photos through the Internet and social networking.

    --
    Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
  6. Litigation over innovation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Kodak has lost money each year but one since Mr. Perez, who previously headed the printer business at Hewlett-Packard Co., took over in 2005. The company's problems came to a head in 2011, as Mr. Perez's strategy of using patent lawsuits and licensing deals to raise cash ran dry.
     
      Perez chose litigation over innovation; failure was inevitable and deserved.

  7. Classic disruptive techonology problem by robla · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even though Kodak saw digital photography coming, the problem was Kodak's whole financial structure was tied to film, and digital technology was disruptive technology. They might have been able to sustain the brand by merging with or buying the right company at the right time (e.g. Canon), but most companies have a hard time dealing with technology shifts that vaporize their main profit center. It's not as simple as just knowing what the next trend is; it's figuring out how to gracefully wind down the existing cash cow while giving the new technology the management attention and resources it needs to thrive. Even then, there still ends up being a lot of pain because you can just put all of the same people you had producing film to work in a digital camera business.

  8. I mean a boring hum-drum one then by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think you mean a Steve Jobs, whereas I mean a more boring hum-drum one like Mark Hurd.

    Basic competent leadership is enough to turn Kodak around, it doesn't need a superstar CEO, or a major new innovation. That graphics software they killed, it was doing well in the marketplace before the credit crunch hit them. Credit crunch hits, idiot CEO sacks all the programmers and outsources it to China to cut costs. Competitors Agfa/Heidleberg etc. hire all the programmers while they're cheap and come out with major upgrades in the next cycle, customers switch from Kodak and Kodak product dies. Why? Some idiot CEO read an outsourcing article and like a gullible idiot believed it???

    Cameras still sell, and sell well, and Kodak are still a respected camera maker, but they make slightly overpriced, ugly looking cameras. Just basic CEO cost cutting, and trying out new designers, and adjusting teams, boring CEO 101 stuff would be enough to bring Kodak back.

    Kodaks problems are just bad CEO problems.

  9. Re:I remember just 6 years ago... Kodak ate Ofoto by Bob_Who · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Someone I knew uploaded their photos to the Kodak site for printing, and had deleted them from her camera.

    Rather than making it easy to get a copy of these photos, it was impossible. I think you basically had to order a PhotoCD or something, which I wasn't going to do.

    They could have made a proper website to allow people to share their photos and print them. But they made it annoying.

    Ofoto.com was the premiere photography web upstart at the millennium. At that time, Ofoto was the largest buyer of KODAK paper. In fact, since they were clearly in a position of market dominance, Ofoto's brand looked very appealing to Kodak. Kodak greedily gobbled up that magnificent Berkeley dot com upstart, and made it Dow Jones blue chips. From that moment forward, it was all down hill for Ofoto. It went from being the technological and artistic leader to falling into stagnation and total alienation of Ofoto's loyal customer base. They tragically proceeded to delete the customer archives, to save on cost. For most people, this cloud was the ONLY back up of their precious data. Kodak refused to allow customers to download their data:or transfer it to other servers. ONLY the purchase of measly 700mb/ $20 CDs was offered as a means of accessing gigabytes of sacred customer data. I recall doing the math and finding that it was more expensive than all of my camera equipment. Kodak MURDERED Ofoto like they self destructed themselves when they realized that Corporate America is no place for a retired labor force. So just die, rob the shareholders, and let go of all those ballooning pension and health care commitments.