Kodak sells Image Sensor Solutions business

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NikonWeb
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Kodak sells Image Sensor Solutions business

Post by NikonWeb »

Kodak has sold its Image Sensor Solutions business to Platinum Equity in a bid to strengthen its financial position. Image Sensor Solutions provides sensors for the Leica M9 and S2 and a number of medium format backs, as well as a wide range of specialist imaging applications.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/1111/11110805kodaknews.asp

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Re: Kodak sells Image Sensor Solutions business

Post by nikonnl »

It is a pitty to sell that part to some risk investment guys, they'll fleece the company and sell it. And what about Olympus? Committing fraud = over and out! Has the world become that greedy?
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Re: Kodak sells Image Sensor Solutions business

Post by Ashley_Pomeroy »

Platinum Equity specialise in the "merger, acquisition and operation of companies", which I mentally parse as "murder, execution, and evisceration". I see they have a company called Pomeroy! And US Robotics, who still exist and are still making modems.

Bit of a shame for Kodak. The press release also mentions that they're selling off a lot of patents, which makes me wonder what they'll have left in a few years. A pile of cash to pay off the pension fund and warehouses full of disposable film cameras. Perhaps they still make a lot of money from selling film to Hollywood. I picture the men at Fujifilm chuckling to themselves, but also feeling a bit worried, just in case they're sitting on a fraudulent minefield too. I'd never really mentally associated camera companies with that sort of thing, they always seemed "clean" to me. Don't know why.

I've just noticed that the "applications - photographic" section of their website has a photo of a Canon lens:
http://www.kodak.com/ek/US/en/Image_Sen ... ations.htm

I always wondered what market Kodak's sensor business wanted to target. They seemed to specialise in really obscure high-end stuff (the website has a "if you have to ask, you don't belong here" vibe) although at the same time the early Four-Thirds cameras had Kodak sensors - but the digital SLR sensor market now seems to be sewn up by Sony and Panasonic and Canon itself. With Dalsa taking a chunk of the medium format business. Presumably Dalsa are small enough to survive on the money they make from the medium format stuff, whereas Kodak is too big.

I'm reminded of the old saying about how the pioneers are the corpses with the spears in their backs.
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