Kodak has great R&D and their digital products are top rate. So what happened?
I heard from someone within the company that Kodak knew there would be a transition from film to digital and planned strategically for it. The problem was it happened much sooner and faster than they planned - by about five years.
I was following digital at the time and it shocked me how quickly it became dominant.
But, even so, Kodak should have moved faster once the revolution took hold. Perhaps it was their size, maybe an IBM-like problem. Perhaps a problem with pensions and making big changes quick.
What happened? See #32 above. I was there.
Kodak invented digital photography.. they didn’t transition fast enough to it though.. they didn’t see the threat soon enough, and suffered from arrogance that people would never leave their brand.
They did the same thing with film in 1984 when they let FUJI win the olympic film sponsorship... they arrogantly thought they were so ubiquitous in the american mind that no one would desert them, they didn’t need it. Fuji got the win, and they saw a market they literally created and owned slowly lose share to them.
Kodak is clearly in trouble, but I am not going to write them off yet. They do have a problem in that now not only has film gone away, but the very idea of a digital camera for the regular joe is gone, they all just use their cell phones for most things. Now they use technology that KODAK invented in those phones, but sadly they aren’t getting paid for it... Kodak did just get a big payout for licensing this past quarter from some manufacturers for patent use, but that same division had made $0 for the last year plus.
I don’t know what if anything Kodak can do.. their entire market, well non professional market anyway, is literally gone now. Enforcing their patents and getting fees and continuing digital research would be a viable model for a company, but it will be nowhere near the scale and scope that Kodak is today.