The Motley Fool has been commenting on the two big CompactFlash manufacturers for digital cameras. In short, SanDisk is making buckets of money, even while it drives down prices. Lexar is losing money. In a recent commentary, Fool.com writer Seth Jayson figures SanDisk will replace Kodak.
You gotta feel sorry for Kodak and its employees, having to change from a business model that relied on repeat sales of film, paper, and processing chemicals. And now has to change to -- what?
I had thot that SanDisk's single-use $10 memory cards were a joke. But I've been monitoring how neophytes approach digital photography -- they do so warily. Getting the JPGs off the camera into the computer is daunting for them, and so doesn't get done.
That's why goofy (to my mind) products -- like card readers built into printers and black boxes that display pictures on TVs -- just might become big sellers, eventually.
Eliminate the computer, is the prime directive, because the computer (for all its flexibility) is too, too complex. The future will reflect the past: there will be the masses who take pictures, and then the rest of us who take photographs and use the computer as the digital darkroom.
Above: Atlantic City skyline from the Atlantic Ocean.
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