f8lee Loc: New Mexico

Hindsight is always 20/20 - remember the famous Ken Olsen (then president of Digital Equipment, a major minicomputer manufacturer) that "There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." Or the alleged statement from Bill Gates in the early 80's that nobody will ever need more than 640Kb of RAM.

But in the moment, it might be easy to see how they thought those things.

Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

Of course it matters, Rich … that was my point! … You wouldn't buy a JK PixPro AstroZoom camera, now, would you? … But, a Kodak PixPro AstroZoom is another matter, indeed!!!

The Kodak name still sells!!! ...

Rich1939 Loc: Pike County Penna.

The Kodak name is now used to con the uninformed. There is no honor in that.

AndyH Loc: Massachusetts and New Hampshire

Excellent point. There are thousands of new jobs in Asia making digital stuff, but the days of industrial jobs producing a living income for American workers are growing short. Kodak did not diversify its market or explore new ones sufficiently, but that's not a choice for those whose jobs are eliminated by technology.

Andy

StanMac Loc: Tennessee

So true. Not to be pessimistic but I’m afraid the economic divide being created by technology coupled with population growth portends some dark days in our and our progeny’s future.

Stan

Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

That "honor" rubbish - could be carried over to the legend "Made in Japan" - when you remember most of the cameras of the 20th Century were …

Now, in the 21st Century - only a handful truly are made in Japan … the rest are made elsewhere in Southeast Asia … where's the honor in that, Rich?

OneShotOne18

This is " what I heard ": When digital phohography was in its infantcy, many companys and some newer start ups, began going with the new tech. Kodak had the opportunity to go with the flow. But, they did not believe it would ever work. So, they did not invest into the new market. Bottom line the got left behind and took a beating while progress surged ahead.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

It's complicated.

Basically, the public ceased to want film and paper prints. Kodak management was too slow to understand that. Paralyzed by gigantic investments in the industrial processes they had created to engineer and manufacture those products, the senior managers (who were primarily marketing oriented financial folks) thought they should keep doing what they had always done.

Sure, they invented the first digital camera. Sure, they had a wonderful research and engineering team in Elm Grove, NY, and elsewhere, working on digital solutions for photo labs and professionals, and they struck branding deals with Asian companies who made cheap digital cameras. But they totally missed the massive paradigm shift that had been unfolding since the advent of the Internet in the mid-1960s and the advent of the personal computer in the mid-1970s. They missed the power of the Internet and its surrounding plethora of Convergence Technologies. They acted like they didn't see the digital tidal wave coming!

The Convergence Technologies are all virtual: digital text, digital audio, digital video, digital still photography, digital computing, digital telephony, digital radio, digital television, digital computer displays, and all the soup of hardware and connectivity and software required to make it work TOGETHER.

The paradigm shift that started with the Internet relentlessly chipped away at the value of a company whose primary focus was a 100+ year old technology based on chemistry rather than electrons.

Kodak thought of themselves as a "Making Memories" company. If only they had concentrated on how Mr. and Ms. Consumer wanted to store and share their memories, and not their then-current technologies, they might be thriving today.

The sort of people who understood what would happen were the pioneers at DARPA, Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Adobe... (on and on)... and NONE of them made silver halide films or papers. They just kept on researching and combining their knowledge into a soup of new technologies that played off of each other so well, they, well, CONVERGED. So now we have the Internet, smart phones, computers, tablets, photo, video, and text sharing sites, and the ability to send a photo, video, or message — TO anywhere in the (free) world — FROM anywhere in the (free) world — in seconds. In a world where that is possible, who the ---- cares about using film? Answer: a few artists, hobbyists, and luddites. The masses of humanity have adopted and embraced digital systems.

Here's the key thing. If you run a business, you have to understand that to survive, you have to be willing to completely cannibalize YOUR OWN PRODUCTS, QUICKLY. Only a rare CEO understands that. We don't sell products! We sell solutions! So if the product and technology you use to solve a problem is less desirable than a newer product or technology that solves the same problem better, faster, less expensively, more creatively, more efficiently, and more addictively, you're doomed if you don't get to the market first, or at least sooner than most.

Paradigm shifts generally occur from outside an industry, because most corporate managers do not know what they do not know, and are blind to the potential threats coming at them from elsewhere. They are blinded by their own success, complacency, hubris, and stasis. The very things that they perceive as RISKS can be OPPORTUNITIES. Conversely, some of the very things they see as opportunities are risks!

Kodak had all the right people in their digital engineering labs. They had the technology, the knowledge, and the systems to lead the field. But they sat on it all.

If you look throughout history, you can find dozens of examples of obsolescence (or major abandonment of demand for a product or service).

Buggy whips
Oil lamps and gas lamps
Cheap mechanical watches
Mimeographs
Vinyl records
Video tape
Audio tape and cassettes
Slide rules
Coal stoves and wood stoves
Ice boxes
...and hundreds more.

While there are "niche" markets for all of the above, the masses have moved on to newer technologies.

As someone who watched it from inside the industry, and watched it kill off most of my own industry, I found it all sadly inevitable. The potential for all of this to happen was common knowledge in many circles as early as the 1970s. It was a magic pipe dream (or in Steve Jobs' case, an acid dream), but it was there.

I was at the PMAI (Photo Marketing Association International) convention in Las Vegas, 1996, when the Advanced Photo System (APS film cameras that used cartridges) was introduced. I remember standing there, listening to the folks from the manufacturers explain it, and thinking, WHY??? I was there for meetings of the Digital Imaging Marketing Association, a sub-group of PMAI. The spirit in those meetings was that film was soon to be doomed. But even those folks didn't realize that silver halide paper had about another decade to go before demand would shrink by 90%. (Both PMAI and its sub-groups are defunct now, having been merged into other organizations.)

Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

And, just a few years ago, everyone was saying - you'll never need more than 4GB RAM … now, the de facto standard seems to be 16GB … (8GB minimum)

And - to what do we owe this rise in computer technology vis a vis Required RAM?

The latest band of FF digital cameras using upwards of 36MP ... 42MP, 46MP, 50MP ... and the extended Photo Editor platforms, needed to process the images from them ....

Soon, the standard for new PCs will be 64GB!!!!!!!

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Not that there's anything wrong with that...

When my 20-year-old twins are 60, they'll probably have a petabyte of RAM in their smartphones (or whatever device supplants that device by then).

8K video will be here soon... Panasonic says by the 2020 Olympics.

Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

Cassettes - obsolete, Bill? … when did THAT happen?

Rich1939 Loc: Pike County Penna.

If you think honor is rubbish please do not attempt to engage with me in the future.

Chris T Loc: from England across the pond to New England

Look around, Bill … 8K is already being trumpeted and marketed ….

Petabyte, huh? … That's what now - in comparison to Terrabyte?

10 times??? … 100 times???

LXK0930 Loc: Souh Jersey

I believe that KODAK is bankrupt and out of business. It is my understanding that they sold the KODAK brand to another company that is producing cameras using the Kodak name. I believe a similar fate befell their film and processing businesses.

f8lee Loc: New Mexico

Last year, the president of Foxxcon (the contract manufacturer that actually makes most of the electronic stuff we buy from iPhones to tablets) said his plan was to replace one million workers with robots, so Asia is hardly immune.