Polaroid Moves With The Times

MarketnewsGadgetTalk: Polaroid Says Goodbye to Instant Camera, Hello to Pocket Prints

Polaroid says that it will stop making instant cameras, and many are calling the move "the end of an era".
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Polaroid has come up with the "next best thing" with a pocket-sized printer that can connect to any PictBridge-enabled digicam via USB or to a compatible camera phone via Bluetooth and spit out a 2 x 3" print on sticky-back paper in about a minute. The neat part about it is that no ink is required: the printer uses patented Zink-based paper that has yellow, magenta and cyan dye crystals embedded into it.Kudos to Polaroid for moving forward with technology, while still attempting to maintain the same convenience that was afforded by the product for which the company was best known. It might not elicit the same feeling one received when watching a photo magically appear before his eyes; but if you ask me, a printer the size of a deck of cards is pretty darned cool.

And kudos to Polaroid for getting with the digital program, while leveraging what remaining power their brand name has. Unlike Kodak, which has done precious little to transfer it's brand power from film to digital.

*note regarding the graphic: I was listening to the Outkast song the other day whose chorus goes "Shake it like a Polaroid picture" and couldn't help but think that even five years from now, that line will be hopelessly outdated, and young kids listening for the first time won't know what that means.

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Eastman Kodak Continues To Dissapoint

CNBC: Eastman Kodak Loss Narrows Helped By On-Going Cost Cutting
The photographic equipment maker reported a loss of $151 million, or 53 cents a share, for the first quarter, up from a loss of $2.98 million, or $1.04 a share, in the same quarter a year ago. Revenue fell 7.5% to $2.12 billion from $2.29 billion in the year-ago period.

So far, Kodak has failed, by any metric you choose, to parlay their dominance in the film business and their branding into anything resembling success in the digital imaging realm.

Especially damning is this passage:

Looking ahead, the world's top maker of photographic film said it expects full-year revenue to be down between 4% and 7%, with digital revenue growth down between 3% and 5%.

This is the year 2007, and not only are they are still being referred to as "the world's top maker of photographic film" but their digital business is in reverse.

At this point, you have to wonder if it's too late to turn Kodak around. Since about 1980, business consultants and people who like sounding smart have made references to the demise of the Buggy Whip business at the start of the 20th century. One hundred years from now, will Kodak be the butt of cautionary tales about failing to evolve your business?

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