Talk:Kodak/Archives/2014

Industry update

Photography is listed under the "Industry" heading on the webpage's sidebar. Since Kodak's current focus is on imaging for businesses, can "photography" be removed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 165.170.128.65 (talk) 17:36, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

I don't think this article really covers the scope of Kodak's fall. They were a engineering and manufacturing giant, though poorly managed.

Management outsourced engineering and manufacturing, and then ended up sitting around why the company wasn't succeeding anymore.

They panicked when Fuji came out with something vaguely digital around 1981 and diversified into all sorts of other businesses. Then in 1993, they decided film had a lot of life left in it. If they made those same decisions in the opposite order, they'd probably be a thriving company today.

They invented computed radiography, then decided not to productize it because it might eat into x-ray film sales. Then when another company came up with it, had to battle to get market share in a market they could have owned.

They sold off their successful divisions (Clinical, Health Imaging, Eastman Chemical, Sterling Drug, Lehn and Fink), holding on to film, then film died and they had nothing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.49.159.66 (talk) 12:21, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

The above is discussed in the paragraph: "In a critical essay, physicist Frank Duarte has argued that several major analog-era imaging companies (including Canon, Nikon, Leica, and Fuji) successfully transitioned from analog to digital, thus indicating that the switch to digital technology is not the only reason for Kodak's decline.[43] A significant factor, in addition to managerial ineptitude, he argues, was the transformation (begun in the early 1990s) from a widely diversified chemical manufacturer to a company mainly focused on imaging.[43]"

Certainly the subject could be expanded.Krl101 (talk) 16:40, 8 November 2014 (UTC)