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With Kodak's traditional camera film sales falling by 16% per year, rather than the predicted 7% drop, the switch to digital cameras has been faster than expected. Often criticised for initially ignoring the digital revolution, Eastman Kodak announced a global restructure earlier this year including 12-15,000 job cuts worldwide and the development of self-service digital photo printing kiosks for consumers, home printers, and low to mid-range digital cameras. Kodak's also pushing its health imaging and commercial printing units and predicts that by next year over 50% of its revenues will come from digital products. Joanna Doonar asks whether this positioning is a viable long-term strategy or if Kodak has it left it too late?
Lewis Blackwell, senior vice president, creative direction, Getty Images
Kodak's lost a lot of ground in digital by not taking it seriously. It's a small low quality player in digital cameras and that's a tragic position to be in. Kodak has incredible global recognition and distribution but there isn't much reason for this to stay because it's all in Kodak's film products. Film's really starting to die now so Kodak must move quickly. In the digital camera space Kodak hasn't got customer interaction so it should either give up or get serious about it, carving out a space it can dominate.
It does make sense for Kodak to become a print product but will people want to keep lots of print records in the future or will they use digital storage? Maybe Kodak should bring out a branded picture hard drive like iPod has done with music.
Kodak needs to focus on one key area that it can have a big play in,...