Kodak
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Research Question #4: Kodak
Kodaks Digital sales are extremely important to the company, because it is such a large portion of their total revenues. Looking at a somewhat recent article, it is evident that “Kodak Digital sales represent 54% of the total revenue brought in by the company in 2005.” (Digital, 2006)
With all of the facets that Kodak has in their business, it is believed that the digital sales will continue to increase. The problem is that they are a relatively small player in a saturated market of digital cameras. There are so many aspects to digital cameras and so many companies switching. They are on cell phones and even pens, and are not used traditionally anymore. Lately Kodak did a product launch featuring high-tech cameras, printers, HD features, and all with touch screen features. (Imaging, 2008) Digital printing today is where the money is, but there are many computer companies to compete with.
Traditional Photography Digital Photography New Technologies
This S-Curve shows that the digital photography is just past the point of inflection, where there is a break because traditional photography is in the past and has broken into the new technology of the digital world. It is still on the rise, because it is not old enough to have a successor technology. (Hill and Jones, 2007) Kodak is fully in the new digital photography, meaning that it has potential to grow in the digital market because they have moved on. This also creates a need for growth and increased market share while they are at the top of the market.
Kodaks main competitors in the 35mm, traditional film industry are as follows:
Canon, Nikon, Pentax, Minolta, Olympus, and possibly Pentax. Those are the main producers of the best lenses, highest quality products, and the most recognized companies on the internet when searching for the best traditional cameras. These are the names that appear most frequently and have the majority of the market share.
As Kodak enters into the digital industry, it widens its competition greatly. Printing services, memory cards, data linkage, LCD screen technology, and camera technology features are all part of the new digital cameras. Every large computer, cell phone, and digital camera company is now in the realm of Kodaks competition. HP, Dell, and apple are all putting digital camera in their computers, creating camera docks, putting out digital cameras, selling packages with computers and also selling applications and software to go with the cameras. Quoting Professor Bruntland in lecture “the largest producers of digital cameras is now Nokia. This is because of the camera feature on the phones. Palm Inc, Blachberry, and many more cellphone companies now have 2.1-3.1Gigabyte cameras right on the telephone not to mention the Japanese digital camera markets for cell phones. Most of the major camera companies are coming out with new digital SLR products. (Oceanside, 2008) When looking at the Oceanside webpage, it is easy to see that Nikon and Canon indeed have digital cameras fit for the most professional and discerning photographer. Sony, Pentax Olympus and Panasonic also have new cameras setup on any website camera shopping site. The issue with Kodak entering into the digital market is that they are now a small player with a larger amount of competition. They have the quality to go forward, but the pricing may be as issue. Assuming it is not, they will flourish for their brand and reputation.
The economics are directly