Kodak files for bankruptcy after more than 130 years

[tinotormed]

Well, it looks like times have changed.

The good-old SLR is giving way for the modern-day digicam.

[BulletMagnet]

Guess it was only a matter of time (didn't Polaroid go belly-up recently as well, or am I mistaken?)...shame they couldn't translate their historical legacy and whatnot into the modern market.

[Deca]

This one actually hurts :/

[Jeneki]

For what it's worth, Kodak does have products on the digital side as well, including quite a few software packages for businesses (I've worked with quite a few of them myself). So it's not like they were completely stuck in a pre-digital mindset.

On the flip side, I really, really do not like any of their software. Difficult to install, weird licensing, resource bloatware, and driver issues with a lot of hardware. I'm sure this news isn't going to make support any easier either.

[Aguraki]

last week news
on topic I've read about it and it seems this company completely lacked vision and got stuck by a gigantic ego that blind it.
at one time they had 95% of us market and 60% of world market which is pretty sick.

put in perspective this could happen to any company (microsoft apple etc..) and actually happened to so many majors(cinema,automobile,music).

[Mischief Maker]

on topic I've read about it and it seems this company completely lacked vision and got stuck by a gigantic ego that blind it.

YOU'D have a giant ego if you were responsible for Mother Teresa's first miracle!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WQ0i3nCx60#t=2m27s

[Ed Oscuro]

The good-old SLR is giving way for the modern-day digicam.

That's not at all what happened here. Kodak got smoked on multiple fronts, pure and simple. It probably started from the moment they released some of the world's first DSLRs, basing them on somebody else's platforms - including not only the ESC model for NASA based on the F4 (for an idea how long ago that was, Nikon's last film SLR generation was the F6) but also the much more common DSC models based on both Nikon and Canon professional cameras, intended for journalists.

Kodak's problem was either failing to see that film wouldn't last forever (the biggest year for film consumption in the United States was 2001), or not making use of their Bayer filter technology in their own products. They still reportedly have a lot of exciting patents but they don't know how to put them off. This does not compare favorably to the spin-off of Bell Labs (in the early '00s, I guess) - whatever they're called now, at least they survived.

For what it's worth, Kodak does have products on the digital side as well, including quite a few software packages for businesses (I've worked with quite a few of them myself). So it's not like they were completely stuck in a pre-digital mindset.

Hey, let's make film for cameras!

Hey, let's make sensors for cameras! Oops, everybody else is making sensors for cameras. Ok, let's make sensors for medium format cameras...that market is going to skyrocket, right?