TWiP #252 – The Adobe Creative Cloud

The comment that Kodak had squandered the opportunity to be a leader in the digital market may be true but likely has little relevancy to the bankruptcy issue.  What most don’t consider is that Kodak’s main revenue was the sale of consumables and related services, and Kodak cameras sold consumables.  A huge infrastructure of tens of thousands of employees and literally square miles of physical real-estate and unique structures were created over 130 years to support the demand for Kodak products.  Also the burden of employee and retiree benefits and tax base is substantial.  Kodak has been effectively downsizing for several decades to attempt to size the company to match the declining demand for products and services.  Economically dismantling such an infrastructure is a tremendous task, and abandonment is an option only if the company completely fails.

Even if Kodak could have been in the forefront of digital photography and related services, the required digital infrastructure would be a mere fraction of the existing infrastructure.  Digital equipment does not sell lucrative consumables.  Likely worldwide competition would have made an initially large digital market share quite modest over time.  Perhaps as a subsidiary, a digital Kodak could be successful; however, the current issues of the parent company would still exist.

The impact of Kodak’s situation on the resilient Rochester NY community has been substantial but not devastating because of the long term efforts to-date.  I applaud those efforts of the Kodak community to deal with a catch 22 situation that technology has created.

Viewpoint of a Kodak Retiree of the Document Imaging group (established 1928), whose products were among the very first to incorporate digital technology (1990), and now has nearly a 100% current offering of digital products.

I enjoy the show week after week, but I don’t think you need to tell people that gear doesn’t make the photographer week after week. All your listeners probably knows it at this point.

Don’t take it the wrong way, if I didn’t enjoy the show, I would stop listening. I just think if your conversations were a bit leaner, the enjoyment for your listeners would be greater and you might get more listeners.