To: orkrious who wrote (13822 ) 8/10/2000 8:54:04 PM From: Ausdauer Respond to Kodak in Forbes Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud of Saudi Arabia, the fifth-richest person in the world, has put $100 million into Kodak shares. In a rare display of hatchet-burying, Carp set a joint venture with archrival Hewlett-Packard earlier this year. They will produce $60,000 inkjet photo minilabs for cramped retail stores and emerging markets overseas. HP will provide the ink and printing heads; Kodak will supply the pricey paper and scanning technology. They hope to hit $1 billion in sales in five years. Kodak invented the centerpiece of the digital camera--the high-resolution sensor--in 1986, and in 1994 it introduced the first digital model below the $1,000 mark. Yet getting there first didn't assure success. When Willy C. Shih, who runs Kodak's digital-imaging business, joined the company from Silicon Graphics in July 1997, a magazine cover story touted HP's ambitions to dominate digital photography . Three years later Kodak has a 20% share of cameras to HP's 4% --and Shih keeps a framed copy of the cover in his office. Another new business looms in printers for digital pictures, but Kodak is especially weak in this area, despite its hallowed brand in photography. About 20% of digital pictures are printed out on paper, and about half of that total are done at home. Last year Kodak introduced its first inkjet, the Personal Picture Maker, made by Lexmark. Consumers showed little enthusiasm. HP has a much stronger presence in electronics stores, and its PhotoSmart line outsold Kodak ten-to-one last Christmas; HPstill has 70% of the market. CompactFlash...the mouse that roared!
