[mark-r]

To be honest, I thought they were already completely gone. The article mentions them filing for bankruptcy in 2012.

They were pretty much doomed from the start. They had built their business by taking a cut from every picture you took, from the rolls of film to the developing to the printing. There was absolutely nothing in the digital camera realm that could duplicate that; their revenue dropped like a rock. If they had sold every single digital camera ever bought, it wouldn't have made up for it.

The contrast between Kodak and Fujifilm is fascinating. Fujifilm survived by pivoting to manufacturing critical components for LCD panels, which were exploding in popularity at the time. https://web.archive.org/web/20250704224940/https://petapixel...

[dougdonohoe]

"Doomed from the start" for a 133 year old company seems a bit hyperbolic. They have lasted 13 decades and counting. How many other company started in the 1890s are still around today?

[woofcat]

I'm presuming they were trying to say "Doomed from the start of the digital revolution"

[ghaff]

One can come up with plenty of criticisms of Kodak. But they did sell off their chemical business when the selling was reasonably good and they did do a fair number of things that anticipated digital.

But you can't just yank out the carpet from a massive consumables business that basically underpinned a company's revenue and profits almost overnight and reasonably expect them to deal with it.

[mark-r]

Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Thanks for clarifying, and sorry for being unclear at the start.

[_fat_santa]

I think where Kodak really missed in recent years is not jumping on the instant camera trend. Fujifilm has their Instax line and there's Polaroid with their "OG" cameras. It would have been easy for Kodak to become a leader in this space just with their brand cache.

[Workaccount2]

I cannot imagine the "instant camera" market is too big. The cameras are expensive and the film is too, while the margins are likely terrible.

If you want to make money in the US, stay away from making hardware and cling to making software.

[pearle]

https://petapixel.com/2023/12/07/instax-is-more-than-50-of-f...

More than 50% of it's imaging business in 2022

[ghaff]

Fujifilm also applied some of their expertise in emulsions to medical applications.

But they were a much smaller company and AFAIK are a pretty niche business today. (X-series cameras are nice but I can imagine that sales amount to a huge number.)

[jeffwask]

Yeah, they famously missed the boat on Digital Cameras when they held one of the earliest patents but decided to not produce and sell them due to the impact to the film side of the business but like you say even if they hadn't made that error, digital cameras were replaced in 10-15 years by smart phones anyway so it would have only been a temporary reprieve.

[guerrilla]

Yeah, how cool would it be if Kodak made monitors and TVs. That'd be an amazing brand. Aw man, now I'm sad that didn't happen.