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Originally Posted by robko
Yes and no. Kodak holds a huge portfolio of patents on digital imaging that would have put them at the forefront of the technology if they had commercialized them. Instead they kept making buggy whips and let their competitors come up with other ways of doing digital so their patents aren't nearly as valuable now (OK, so that's a little oversimplified  but they had the potential and played it safe with their known film products).
Unless they can make this change for free it's probably a bad overall decision as books are going to specialty for those who want hard copy or digital for the rest. |
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Originally Posted by kennyc
My thoughts exactly. Kodak had all the keys to the kingdom and squandered it away, exactly as the current big publishing houses seem to be doing with the book industry.  |
Quote:
Originally Posted by kennyc
Of course they did, they could have chosen to invest in research and shifting the company in the new direction. Instead they dug in their heels and continued to focus on a dwindling market. ....
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Kodak entered the digital market and was a presence for a long time. The problem is that they were not an electronics company, nor were they a higher end camera company. 95% of their business involved chemistry, and they didn't have the expertise - despite having some patents - to compete with Sony or Panasonic on the electronics side, or with Canon and Nikon on the high end camera side. They went out of business because their business - film - ceased to exist.
Book printing companies - the once who put the ink on the paper for paper books - are in a similar position due to e-books. They will be out of business if e-books become 95% of the market, which I'm sure they know. But there's not really anything they can do about it - they can't suddenly become an e-ink screen producer, or even a publisher, because that's too far outside what they actually know. It's not enough to know what's going to happen; you also have to have the ability to do something about it.