[Leica] Konica Minolta to quit photo market - now Kodak staying in film

[sethrosner at nycap.rr.com (Seth Rosner)]

Don Dory wrote:

"Kodak is run largely by a group of executives that grew up when Kodak did 
control the market and they can not seem to break out of that mindset."

Don, you could not be more wrong. Kodak today is run by Chairman and Chief 
Executive Officer Antonio Perez who came to Kodak as Chief Operating Officer 
almost three years ago from a 25 year career with Hewlett Packard. His 
entire background is digital.

Perez' immediate predecessor as CEO was Daniel Carp who joined Kodak in that 
capacity in 1999. From Motorola, if memory serves me well. Robert Brust, 
Chief Financial Officer, came to Kodak six years ago from Unisys 
Corporation, a global information service & technology company and before 
that was a lifer at General Electric.

Inasmuch as over seven years ago the Kodak Board had already identified the 
impending shift to digital and an inevitable decline in world-wide film 
sales, Carp was hired precisely to carry out the implementation of an 
enormous effort to expand Kodak's digital and other businesses (e.g. health 
and dental care) to a point where digital and other business sales would 
compensate for the silver halide decline.

Having served as a deck offficer on U.S.S. Intrepid and stood thousands of 
hours on watch as an OOD underway, I know first hand about kinetic inertia 
and the energy required and the slow reaction time to turn an aircraft 
carrier. Turning a goliath like Kodak in a new direction without capsizing 
the ship - i.e. going bankrupt - is analagous.

At my request Kodak sent representatives to the last two LHSA annual 
meetings ('04 & '05). Both made very thorough, interesting and persuasive 
presentations describing Kodak's efforts and plans in digital and film 
technology. Of course they acknowledged the decline in film sales but 
emphasized that Kodak was not leaving the film business and, in fact, showed 
newly developed film emulsions. They also donated five rolls of film, two 
color (slide and negative), two b+w (Tri-X and 400TCN - not sure I have the 
current nomenclature but yuou know which I mean) and a roll of infra-red 
film, for each LHSA member attending. That's 750 rolls of film. And please 
don't tell me they gave it away because they can't sell it!   ;-)

Is Kodak going digital? Of course. They want the Company to stay in 
business. Are they quitting film. In my jaundiced opinion, not in your 
lifetime, may it be long and full of health.

It may be convenient and even feel good to beat up on the old yellow box. 
But get the facts straight and stop indulging in myth. Interested Luggers 
should take a look at Kodak's website, click on corporate/investor 
center/executive biographies and see the actual backgrounds of the people 
who are running Kodak today. Including how many are responsible for film as 
well as digital.

Respectfully,

Seth