Monday, January 30, 2012

Don't take my Kodachrome away


This NPR story on saving the American brand starts with Kodak, which "basically invented digital photography"**, but still didn't survive the transition to digital cameras.  



The answer to that is pretty simple, I think.  Even in Paul Simon's song, he had a Nikon camera -- "Kodak" is synonymous with "film", and not "camera" (except for gimmicks like the Kodak Disc), so that when film became obsolete, Kodak went with it.  Next, because of smartphones, the point-and-shoot camera market is dead, so unless a camera company has invested in making SLR's, they're SOL, too.



** Wikipedia summarizes where the research was.  Kodak had the tech, but not the branding. Looking at the market share section, we're in a Canon and Nikon world with a few fringe players.




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