Kodak to stop selling film-based cameras
January 13, 2004Wow, it’s the end of an era–Kodak will soon stop selling film-based cameras here in the US and Canada. They’ll still do the disposables and of course their digital cameras, but they’re getting out of the film-based business at least in the developed world (there’s still good demand in the developing world for film-based cameras).
The thing is, I wonder if Kodak has really figured out how they’re going to make money in a digital world. I mean, one of their biggest sources of revenue was the film for cameras. If they go digital in a big way how are they going to replace that revenue?
Because selling the cameras themselves isn’t going to be the road to profit, not with the cut-throat competition out there driving prices downward every day. It’s the consumables, the inks and papers and such, where the long-term money is at. And that’s where Kodak will be facing off against entrenched competitors like HP.
I wish Kodak luck. I’d hate to see them go into the same kind of slow painful decline we seem to be seeing with other old-line camera companies like Polaroid.
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