Kodak Announcement

[Jorge Gasteazoro]

Jorge -- that's beautiful, brilliant - a digital picture spitter -- polaroid should do that. -- I want it to make phone calls, fax, gps, Flashlight, and car door key. Wait -- it's coming. Ultimately the paper will not be necessary



Exactly, Kodak in the past brought us the ease to take photographs, and did so even in countries where people are very poor but still desire to take pics of aunt Gertrude. This can be achieved with as you say a digital picture spitter. Or Kodak using it's name recognition could invest in "one hour labs" where you bring a flash card and you get the pics in a few minutes, coupled with a cheap, easy to use digital camera that gave good enough results, they would probably make a mint. I dont know that paper wont be necessary, I think it will, people will still want to give away pics etc.



For me digital is not an option, but as a bussiness it is the wave of the future, and the future is here and has caught Kodak with their pants down. IMO Kodak will never be able to catch up with the rest, they are just too far behind the ball as far as cutting edge technology goes. Making a digital camera that has 50 M pixels and costs $500000 or a printer that reproduce 100000 colors and shades but costs $30000 is not going to keep them in the black or make the technology available worlwide. Sadly they have forgotten what they do best, which is bringing picture making ability to everybody affordably and conviniently. Ah well, is time to short sell Kodak....:-)

[Sergio Caetano]

" ... We all want to Powerpoint ... " (John Bailey)

John, we WHO ?

[Bob._3483]

Well, at least Leica seem to like Kodak's digital products: http://www.bjphoto.co.uk/cms/photo_news/266.shtml.

Kodak have been going since the dawn of popular photography - I wouldn't count them out just yet; the market has simply diversified so no one company will dominate anymore.

Cheers,

[Jeffrey Scott]

This may have been mentioned already but I didn't have time to read all the replies this morning, but I hope this means primarily the 35mm market, which seems to be affected by the digital onslaught the most.

[Wilton Wong]

Scott Killian writes: <I've made this anology on the forum before, but people are still buying sail boats and the combustion engine has been with us for over a century. We all know that practical concerns are not driving this demand and the same is already largely true with film. Niche players will pick up this slack, just as they have in other industries. This is the discussion I was hoping to have here.>

Being a sailboat owner for 25 years, I can tell you about all the sailboat companies going out of business over the years.

But that should not prevent Kodak from continuing to be a multi-national in the film business even if digital does become their cash cow some time in the future. You don't have to exit a business just because it has shrunk, as long as it is still profitable and providing good returns on the investment!