CREDIT: Ian Lindsay, Vancouver Sun New Kodak digital cameras and accessories now available include a picture viewer and a camera dock with remote that connects to your computer and can make prints.

Like a brontosaurus feeling a bitingly cold breeze for the first time, the traditional film business has gotten its first real glimpse of its demise. Just ask imaging goliath Eastman Kodak, which has the most to lose from the industry’s looming ice age.

— Forbes Magazine, Feb. 2002

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Just a few years ago, Eastman Kodak Co., it seemed, was an imaging dinosaur, too locked into its lumbering film-based ways to see the digital camera menace headed its way.

Online, where the buzz about the coming of digital was the highest, there were headlines like “Kodak: The Next Polaroid?”

Japanese companies like Sony, Canon, Olympus and Nikon were already flooding the market with their digital offerings, and the media were devoting their time to topics like the “megapixel wars”.

But then comes the spring of 2005, and who should be the North American market leader in digital photography — with 21.9 per cent of the market — but the photo brontosaurus itself, Kodak, which shipped 4.88 million point-and-shoot digital cameras in 2004 and recorded a profit in that market for the first time.

According to IDC, a New England research firm that tracks such things, last year Kodak surged ahead of former leader Sony (19.4-per-cent market share), Canon (16.1 per cent), Olympus (10.4 per cent), HP (8.1 per cent), Fuji (8 per cent), and Nikon (6.2 per cent).

So what happened? Well, according to Kodak — which once upon a very old time had as its slogan “You press the button, we do the rest” — went back to exactly the kind of consumer-friendly basics it was touting in the 1890s.

It not only produced solid digital performers in the low to medium range of the market, but it decided to make things all about sharing photos with family and friends — hence the Kodak Easyshare name which stretches across its consumer camera line.

And it aimed its pitch at women.

“With digital, we’re moving into the mass markets now, moving from the male to the female in terms of digital photography,” said Greg Morrison, Kodak Canada‘s digital capture and home printing marketing manager. “And the females are the ones who print.”

Men, it seems, liked the concept of digital cameras in a kind of gadgety-guy way, but weren’t all that eager to share. Seventy per cent of their images just sat on their computer, unseen.

“But now its more than just about capturing — it’s about capturing and sharing your images,” said Morrison.

Each of the cameras from Kodak comes with a “share” button, allowing users to tag a picture for printing, or tag it to be put in a favourites folder on a computer, or to be tagged — with an actual address stored in the camera — to be sent in e-mail.

“I come home from my work and my wife has taken 40 pictures of our little girl, and she’s already e-mailed some to her family, to her friends at work,” said Morrison. “Then she can print some out, put some on the fridge, and take some over to her aunt who doesn’t use a computer.”

Much of this is possible because of another Kodak success story — its various models of Easyshare printer docks, which were were the best-selling line of snapshot photo printers in the United States in 2004.

Either connected to the computer, or as a stand-alone, the relatively small printer docks allow for instant printing at home or even at parties.

“The objective is to make it simple and easy for the consumer, especially the female consumer, to get pictures out of her camera,” said Morrison. “A big barrier around this technology stuff is, how do I get the images to my computer and how do I print them.”

The dock can even be connected to a TV set to allow for slide shows, and, if someone likes a particular shot, it can be printed out on the spot. The next step is a WiFi card that will allow photos to be sent from the dock to a computer on a home wireless network.

And the Easyshare cameras allow users to carry small versions of their images to show people on the camera’s LCD screen.

Soon Kodak will be releasing its tiny fits-in-the-palm Easyshare Picture Viewer with a 2.5-inch LCD screen and enough built-in memory to store up to 150 pictures. Add a memory card, say one gigabyte, and its capacity becomes huge.

Although Morrison wouldn’t comment on future plans by Kodak to go up in the consumer market from its present top-of-the-line Z series cameras (like the six-megapixel, 10x optical zoom Z740), there are rumours in the industry that the next few months could see exactly that happening.

However, Morrison does say that there’s still plenty of opportunity for Kodak in the lower-end three-megapixel markets where its C-series cameras are.

“The latest research, in January, shows that three-megapixel cameras still have a 30-per-cent share,” said Morrison.

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KODAK DIGITAL STRATEGY PAYS OFF BIG:

In the fall of 2003, when the naysayers were predicting Eastman Kodak was headed for the dumper, the company announced a digital strategy that charted a course for the company to have $16 billion US in revenues by 2006, and $20 billion by 2010.

It had a three-pronged strategy to hold its own in the consumer products market, while basically doubling its business in the commercial imaging and health areas.

To do this, Kodak went on a $3-billion spending spree, which ended recently with the acquisition of Vancouver-based Creo Inc. for $1.2 billion.

Now, with sales of $13.5 billion in 2004, Kodak, appears to be on track to achieve the $16 billion revenue figure by 2006.

“The key message in all of this is that Kodak has truly become a digital company, we’ve proven that we can do it,” said Bruce Horsburgh, Kodak Canada‘s director of corporate communications.

KODAK MOMENTS:

Kodak point-and-shoot digital cameras shipped in the U.S. in 2004: 4.88 million, 66 per cent more than it did in 2003.

Share of North American market: 21.9 per cent, up from 17.9 per cent in 2003 and 13 per cent in 2002, putting it first according to research firm IDC.

Shopping spree: Kodak spent $3 billion US in acquiring digital companies, including Vancouver-based Creo Inc., for $1.2 billion Cdn.

© The Vancouver Sun 2005