Bye bye Kodak

[Jim Carlile]

Get your film now, boys. This company's not long for the world:

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-17/kodak-worth-five-times-more-in-breakup-with-3-billion-patents-real-m-a.html

 

Wall Street's going to strip off all the goodies and close down the rest. Kodak was the #1 stock today in anticipation; it rose 25% in value.

[Will Montgomery]

Motion Picture stocks are still making money so even if they break it up, someone will continue to produce Kodak's stocks. Huge market in India and Hong Kong still... they love film.

[Daniel Lee]

Over-dramatisation.

 

If worse comes to worse, you can get Lucky Color (equivalent to 80's Kodak Gold) in 2000ft tins, it's C-41 and remjet-less though.

[K Borowski]

I have called, e-mailed them about film processing starting in 2008 with no response.

 

As far as I know, they got out of it in '08.

 

 

 

Kodak's dying spells a destabilizing moment in color photography; it's a race to the bottom at this point folks, with Fuji being given leverage to cut their products with a total lack of competition. Kodak going under will have a destabilizing effect on ALL film-based photo-chemo-optical imaging, and could hasten its demise.

 

I only hope Kodak's ONLY PROFITABLE SEGMENT can be spun off at this point and allowed a fighting chance to die with some dignity, not being dragged down by deadweight digital products.

 

Anyway, Daniel, I wouldn't make such light of it. . .

 

 

(P.S.: Several of the respondents of this thread should take careful note to the remarks I made prior to this article, all which were based upon, unfortunately true rumors I heard about EK Co.)

Edited August 18, 2011 by K Borowski

[Matthew W. Phillips]

Karl, sad to say but if you had started your week investing your life savings in EK, you would have increased the savings by 50% by the end of the week. EK is not as dead as you think it is.

[Martin Hong]

That's when Fujifilm start to own the film market?

[Phil Rhodes]

There's something deeply bent about the world when this situation can arise.

 

Patents are supposed to protect innovation. That being the case, you'd think that Kodak would be in a commanding position, able to deploy all of the fresh, new ideas it has as products for people to buy. It'd be able to employ staff, hire engineers and designers, and do its part for the economy by running a trade surplus.

 

But no. Patents aren't about innovation any more. Patents are about finding an idea that someone else had and didn't realise was patentable. It's about childish running to teacher waving a piece of paper, squealing "I thought of it first! Me! Me!". It's about stifling and limiting innovation, and most of all it's about getting free money without having to do any work for it by suing someone who actually found the courage to try and make something real.

 

I don't think it's going too far to say that this sort of despicable poltroonery is one of the principal sicknesses of modern western civilisation. We sit around having procedural pissing contests like this in return for the promise of free gold while or real capabilities decay around us.

 

The entire concept is patently wrong. The value of Kodak is in its ability to manufacture, to design and build, to make things. Unimplemented ideas, even if they aren't as utterly trivial as most corporate patent portfolios, are worth very little and if their only purpose is to be used as a stick to beat other people then their value to the wider economy might well be negative.

[Matthew W. Phillips]

...poltroonery...

 

I can guarantee you that you will never find this word in a newspaper article. Not unless it is a pseudo-high brow type of publication that prides itself on self importance and being condescending.

 

Your writings remind me of an episode of Xena:Warrior Princess I watched when I was a teenager when Gabby went to the Athens Academy for the performing bards and that one guy always spoke in these hilarious ways to try to sound intelligent but most just stood by in bemusement at his antics.

[K Borowski]

Karl, sad to say but if you had started your week investing your life savings in EK, you would have increased the savings by 50% by the end of the week. EK is not as dead as you think it is.

 

Because they anticipate it being sold off and or bought out? That's hardly an increase to be proud of. . .

 

And if you'd invested your life savings in Kodak stock in, say 1997, your life saving would be gone. Kodak was worth nearly $100 a share then.

[Phil Rhodes]

I can guarantee you that you will never find this word in a newspaper article.

Nor would you find "procedural pissing contest" either, which I think is even better!

[K Borowski]

Phil, I agree with your feelings on patents, but I don't think that is what Kodak anticipated happening to their patents when they filed them.

 

Unfortunately, they seem to be going off half-cocked trying to compete in inkjet printing, as if this is going to somehow save the company.

 

 

I think SELLING their patents is foolish. I think there is a lot that they can use them for in manufacturing, engineering new devices.

 

 

 

But whatever they decide to do, their film segment is still one of the only profitable ones in the entire company. If these potential buyers want, as I fear, nothing whatsoever to do with this segment of the field, they should spin it off to someone who does care. . .

[Guest]

Matthew, I beg you, don't start a flame war with Phil.

 

R,

[Matthew W. Phillips]

Matthew, I beg you, don't start a flame war with Phil.

 

R,

 

Phil started it in another thread. :lol:

[Matthew W. Phillips]

Because they anticipate it being sold off and or bought out? That's hardly an increase to be proud of. . .

 

I think it is something to be proud of to say you were one of barely two handfuls of companies to see any gains at all on Wednesday and Thursday. And Kodak is not going to be sold off or bought out in the next six months.

[John Holland]

Kodak have bought this all themselves making stocks that look like HD / Video for to many years thank goodness for Fuji. I do understand the US thinking as in its always been Kodak / Panavision / Mole Richardson .

[K Borowski]

Sorry John, am going to have to disagree with you here: The only thing MAKING Kodak money is their film. They haven't lost nearly the market share in MoPic imaging as they have in other areas to Fuji.

 

I hear with color photographic paper Kodak only has 30% of the market share on its home soil here in the United States. Pretty pitiful figure!

 

 

I don't agree with this practice (of mandating Kodak) but I hear some US networks require 35mm Eastman Kodak neg. for television shows. HBO may be the one I am thinking of. I don't agree with them mandating Kodak, but good for them mandating 35! They want the highest calibre for their audiences unlike the movie studios :-/ I swear, what I am seeing for some of these 3D movies, what is the latest 3D shark movie out? This summer's "Pirhana 3D" they must WANT IT to look bad. They've got to, they've got to be making fun of themselves, the genre, something, right?

 

 

 

Back on topic, I'd be curious to see the breakdown of numbers between Kodak and Fuji marketshare of cine film sold.

 

I remember David saying something about Fuji not having the physical size or capacity to actually coat enough for the world market at least before all the theatres went digital. I would assume even with the loss of clientele, they would still get a net gain in production from say '08 if they had to take world color film production upon their shoulders.

 

 

It appears that Lucky Film, checking their site, is still in business so I was wrong there. Movie film or bulk film had disappeared though, so they may be out of that market. I remember at one time their manufacturing ECP. Looks like it's back to Agfa-Gaveart, Fuji, Kodak again.

[John Sprung]

I think SELLING their patents is foolish. I think there is a lot that they can use them for in manufacturing, engineering new devices.

 

But patents aren't used for manufacturing or engineering. They're used for suing the other guys for making things. Big companies create or buy huge portfolios of thousands of patents, because they want to be able to use a sort of cold war - mutual assured destruction thing against the other big companies. Sue us for patent infringement, and we'll go through our 335,000 patents and find dozens of ways to sue you back. It's like little kids stockpiling snowballs for a fight. Only it takes 17 years for a patent to melt.... ;-)

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[Simon Wyss]

I don't think it's going too far to say that this sort of despicable poltroonery is one of the principal sicknesses of modern western civilisation.

Entirely agree with you, Phil. I call it opportunism.

[K Borowski]

Not true here. Kodak has a proud tradition of USING its patents. Look at the long line of innovation they came up with: From the first movie films in the 1890s to some of the first digital cameras, polyester film, color negative, Kodachrome, the stocks for technicolor, the first films to land on the moon, Super 8, Cineon, the Kodak picture CD in the '90s, and a lot of things I am not remembering too well late on a Friday night.

 

Kodak has had a lot of CURRENT INNOVATIVE IDEAS LATELY, that that ink peddling buffoon running the country has killed on the vine.

[K Borowski]

Not true here. Kodak has a proud tradition of USING its patents. Look at the long line of innovation they came up with: From the first movie films in the 1890s to some of the first digital cameras, polyester film, color negative, Kodachrome, the stocks for technicolor, the first films to land on the moon, Super 8, Cineon, the Kodak picture CD in the '90s, and a lot of things I am not remembering too well late on a Friday night.

 

Kodak has had a lot of CURRENT INNOVATIVE IDEAS LATELY, that that ink peddling buffoon running the country has killed on the vine.

[Brian Drysdale]

Kodak has had a lot of CURRENT INNOVATIVE IDEAS LATELY, that that ink peddling buffoon running the country has killed on the vine.

 

I don't think you can point to anyone person, there was a forgetting of lessons learnt during 1929 and the 1930s for many years and now the economics of that period have a good chance of repeating themselves. Manufacturing has suffered in many western countries, Germany is one country where it hasn't.

[John Sprung]

I don't think you can point to anyone person, there was a forgetting of lessons learnt during 1929 and the 1930s for many years and now the economics of that period have a good chance of repeating themselves.

 

Not really -- Early 1920's and late 1970's perhaps more so. The laws and regulations in place from the Great Depression -- margin and such -- haven't changed. The whole debt ceiling kabuki show ended with a decision firmly in favor of business as ususal. That's where there'll be a lesson to learn, if we survive....

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[K Borowski]

f we survive....

 

John, I wanted to be the gloom-and-doomsman in this thread, and you have just one-upped every depressing thing I said with that phrase :-D

[John Sprung]

Well, it's not like we're all going to die. The Russians are mostly still alive, even though the Soviet Union is gone. It could go like that, maybe a little worse since the pieces would be smaller. Hmmm.... Texas and California get seats at the U.N.?.... China forecloses on the White House?.... ;-)

 

For real gloom and doom, maybe we cut back on NASA and there's no way to stop that big asteroid in 2026 or 2037 or whenever it's supposed to get here.

 

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

[K Borowski]

NASA can't even get Seven Up anymore, let alone nuking some rogue asteroid. That's what Hollywood is for, right?