It's often said that Kodak fell because they didn't invest in the technology early enough and were too late by the time they started to do so in the 90s.
I think this is often used as an example of the "innovators dilemma" i.e. Kodak's cash cow was film sales. Every digital camera sold would potentially eliminate a film customer forever. So internally there was just an unwillingness to admit that the future was digital. So many people thinking things like "serious/pro photographers will never abandon film" or "digital will never have the quality of film" and for a little while they were right. By the time they realized they were wrong it was too late.
What's also odd is that they had really great image sensor technology, used heavily in scientific and medical instruments, and somehow lost the lead there too.
You're spot on and what happened to the company as a result is tragic. Kodak pioneered digital camera technology, patenting their first digital camera in 1978 and developing a digital SLR in 1989. Unfortunately they chose to shelve it all rather than market it in fear of cannibalizing film sales.
I don't think Kodak was blind to the potential of digital cameras. It's just that the digital camera business didn't have the overall revenue potential of the film business no matter how you handled the transition. Remember that between raw film, processing, and printing, they were getting a huge cut out of every picture taken. There's no similar revenue stream in digital.
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I think this is often used as an example of the "innovators dilemma" i.e. Kodak's cash cow was film sales. Every digital camera sold would potentially eliminate a film customer forever. So internally there was just an unwillingness to admit that the future was digital. So many people thinking things like "serious/pro photographers will never abandon film" or "digital will never have the quality of film" and for a little while they were right. By the time they realized they were wrong it was too late.
What's also odd is that they had really great image sensor technology, used heavily in scientific and medical instruments, and somehow lost the lead there too.
You're spot on and what happened to the company as a result is tragic. Kodak pioneered digital camera technology, patenting their first digital camera in 1978 and developing a digital SLR in 1989. Unfortunately they chose to shelve it all rather than market it in fear of cannibalizing film sales.
I don't think Kodak was blind to the potential of digital cameras. It's just that the digital camera business didn't have the overall revenue potential of the film business no matter how you handled the transition. Remember that between raw film, processing, and printing, they were getting a huge cut out of every picture taken. There's no similar revenue stream in digital.