Kodak's Printer Business

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Andrew Martin, Negative Exposure; Betting on printers, Kodak fails to satisfy Doubters. New York Times, Oct 21, 2011.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/2 ... sq=kodak&st=cse
("To date, Kodak’s consumer inkjet business has captured about 6 percent of the United States market, according to the market research firm IDC. In contrast, H.P. commands about 60 percent of the market, which is expected to remain relatively flat or even decline.")

Note:
(a) For buggy whip, see whip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whip
(A buggy whip is a horsewhip with a long stiff shaft and a relatively short lash used for driving a horse harnessed to a buggy or other small open carriage)
(b) The report mentioned "sales of Kodak’s signature yellow-box film collapsed."

Remember? Kodak films were inside yellow boxes, of various sizes.
(c) Right after the statement above, the report averred, "'The big story here is that their core business — the yellow box business — got cannibalized by the digital camera, which ironically they invented,' said Mr [Chris] Whitmore, who works at Deutsche Bank Securities."

(i) The report sort of echoed itself: "In 1975, a Kodak scientist invented the world’s first digital camera, which was about the size of a toaster. At that time, Kodak controlled about 90 percent of the film market and 85 percent of camera sales in the United States, according to Harvard researchers."

(ii) History of the camera
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_camera
(section 10 Digital cameras; section 10.1 Early development:  The first recorded attempt at building a digital camera was in 1975 by Steven Sasson, an engineer at Eastman Kodak. It used the then-new solid-state CCD image sensor chips developed by Fairchild Semiconductor in 1973. The camera weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg), recorded black and white images to a cassette tape, had a resolution of 0.01 megapixels (10,000 pixels), and took 23 seconds to capture its first image in December 1975. The prototype camera was a technical exercise, not intended for production.)

CCD stands for charge-coupled device.

(d) Eastman Kodak Company was founded in 1892 and is headquartered in Rochester, New York.







This report does not mention China.