Last Thursday the 131 year old icon in photography, Kodak, filed for Chapter 11. Thus ends a long and storied history of a company that helped create memories. Due to the onslaught of digital photography, competition from Fuji, and high-quality cellphone cameras, they were unable to adapt and fell by the wayside like buggy whip manufacturers of old. To help see the recent financial picture, here is a graph from Tech Crunch:
The curious thing in this story is that Kodak invented digital photography and still owns $1B+ in patents. While the company continues to lay off the remainder of its 18,800 employees, down from 150,000, they will continue to seek patent relief from RIM (Blackberry), Apple, HTC (smartphones), Fujifilm, and Samsung.
Thanks to Mashable here are some photos of memorable Kodak products:
In 1900 the Kodak "BROWNIE" was introduced. This cardboard camera sold for $1, with film at 15 cents a roll. The BROWNIE is credited with bringing the medium into the financial reach of everyone. Kodak continued to produce BROWNIES until the late 1960s, selling millions of models across the globe.
In 1957 cameras got even easier to use with the release of the first BROWNIE STARMATIC -- the first automatic snapper in a range of seven models.
Kodak sold 10 million STARMATICS in five years, an impressive figure later surpassed by the phenomenally successful INSTAMATIC range.
Kodac sold 50 million INSTAMATICs from 1963 to 1970.
Kodachrome was the best slide and movie film in history.
I feel sad at Kodak's closing for 2 reasons. First, they were a customer of my firm back in the 80's and 90's and I had many fond interfaces with their personnel. They loved to come to Nashville, especially in the winter, and were always making jokes about how bad the weather was in Rochester. They were respectful of us and fun to go to dinner with. The second reason is their company was like mine, Nortel. Nortel was over 100 years old, grew to a $20B firm with 120,000 employees, and failed to make the successful transition to digital technology. In our days we were the leading edge in technology and we ruled the market. Such is life however. New guys came in and we were gone. In spite of the loss of Kodak and Nortel, progress must be made. So there will be others who grow big only to vanish. My prediction is that Facebook will not be around in 10 years. Time will tell. So rest in peace Kodac, and thanks for the memories.
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