Last month, the Eastman Kodak Company filed for bankruptcy and in an effort to survive has made a not so surprising announcement that it’s killing off the entire part of its business that sells digital cameras, digital frames, and pocket video cameras in hopes of saving $100 million a year. Kodak brought cameras to the masses worldwide with its Brownie and Instamatic cameras in the 1880s and was the dominant camera maker for decades. Kodak’s familiar red and yellow film boxes have been recognized worldwide by everyone from amateurs to professionals as being the film of choice for decades.
In the mid-1970s, a Kodak researcher named Steven Sasson created the first digital camera and as recently as 2006, Kodak was in the top three digital camera manufacturers in the world. In the 1990s, Kodak spent $4 billion in R&D to develop the camera technology used today in most modern phones and digital devices. Even amidst all of that R&D money being spent, Kodak didn’t reduce its financial reliance on film photography that allowed competitors from both the photography and consumer electronics spaces to overtake its dominance in the photography market. Now, Kodak is banking its future on home photo printers, high-speed commercial inkjet presses, workflow software, and packaging to be the core of its future business and has spent most of its money in those areas in recent years. After Kodak phases out its digital camera business, its consumer division will focus on printing. Kodak has a statement on its website that says some of the products debuted recently at the CES show in January will never make it to market because of this decision.
Popular Photography magazine remains optimistic that Kodak won’t shutdown its film business, noting that it’s still a profitable division for the company.
It took me more years than my friends would believe to get into the digital photography era. That is because I loved my 35mm Minolta SLR and the only film I would use was Kodak film. Even though I, and many others today, don’t use film anymore it would be really sad to see film go the way of dodo.
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