----- Original Message ----- From: "Don Roberts" : here's one for the consipacy theorists! Not :I see Kodak is currently : earning more money from their digital products than the film based : products. They also posted a one BILLION dollar loss the last : quarter. Speculation on their future anyone? Is Fuji in the same : boat? Will there be large scale transfers of photo dominance to : electronics companies? What do you all think? I said it before, the cam companies cannot compete against the rivals they got into bed with, the electronics makers - HP is/was the leading digicam seller in the US at around 70% of total sales, Nikon's share in the last report I read was around 1% and kodak or sony were sitting around 18% can't recall which, but ... Em writes: Well, Kodak is a moderately big player in the point and shoot crowd, but I don't see that their machines are as common as Fuji's. My hunch used to be that the people who got to a cheap digital disposble would be the biggest winners, but there was a big article on pdnonline this week about the sales success of camera phones which apparently have been outselling cell phones by 2 to 1 during the last year. The cam phones will very likely take over from the P&S market - they're already making 5 Mp camphones with flashes and manual focus. The zooms in the pipeline too. and on DPreview today: "Germany photographic company AgfaPhoto is likely to close down by the end of the year, making around 1700 of its workforce redundant, reports DW-World.de. Talks with UK company Photo-Me International about a possible takeover were rejected by the creditors because the offer "contained too many points that were unacceptable". AgfaPhoto has been operating under bankruptcy protection since May, when it filed for insolvency. The company will end operations at the end of the year, after all its stock has been used." grim k
