DailyTech - Kodak and Sanyo Part Ways on OLED Technology

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IT Kodak and Sanyo Part Ways on OLED Technology
Tuan Nguyen (Blog) - February 1, 2006 4:40 PM

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7 comment(s) - last by Big Al.. on Feb 2 at 5:09 AM

The SK Display joint-venture between Kodak and Sanyo ended, with Sanyo taking over control. Kodak says it has learned enough from the relationship

In the recent shuffle at Kodak, the company has dropped a significant portion of its offerings. Kodak previously announced that they would no longer be focusing on traditional photography mediums and instead put resources into developing the digital photography market.

This week, Kodak has also announced that it will be dropping out of its relationship with Sanyo Electronics, its original partner, for OLED development. The move further reinforces Kodak's movement into very tight markets and it said that the partnership with Sanyo was for educational and market development purposes only. Kodak says that now that it has gained enough knowledge, it will proceed to start out solo first, and then develop further relationships on a case-by-case basis. Mary Jane Hellyar, Kodak's President of its displays division says:

Our participation in SK Display has been valuable and we now have a good understanding of the design and manufacturing process of OLED displays. This expertise is enabling us to work closely with our licensees to optimize their panel designs, systems integration and time to market.

Kodak says Sanyo will take over the SK Display joint venture. Whether the two companies will establish a partnership in the future was not mentioned. At this time, Kodak did not specify whether it had new partners or was it seeking any.

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Kodak used Sanyo?

By MrCoyote on 2/1/2006 5:15:27 PM , Rating: 2

So basically Kodak used Sanyo to gain information to apply to their own future products? Isn't that illegal?

RE: Kodak used Sanyo?

By Oxonium on 2/1/2006 5:23:24 PM , Rating: 2

Not if Sanyo agreed to the partnership? Plus it sounds like Sanyo is getting all of the physical assets of the collaboration.

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RE: Kodak used Sanyo?

By wileec on 2/1/2006 5:29:58 PM , Rating: 2

Kodak should focus more on cameras(film & digital) and drop all of the niche markets. Also how about building a quality point-and-shoot camera that has a solid feeling body? All these cameras coming out today are made too cheaply and disposable looking. Battery doors that are flimsy, etc... Nothing like my dad's Zeiss Ikon from 50 years ago which still takes great pictures today.

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RE: Kodak used Sanyo?

By Homerboy on 2/1/2006 6:00:36 PM , Rating: 2

Ummm because they ARE built as disposable. Why would Kodak or any manufacturer want you to buy ONE camera and keep it for 50+years? Not too good for their sales numbers eh?

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RE: Kodak used Sanyo?

By mindless1 on 2/1/2006 9:39:54 PM , Rating: 3

Quite wrong. YOu buy a camera and it breaks in 2 years, are you going to buy the same brand again? I doubt it.

On the other hand, you're about to buy a camera and all the camera gurus talk about great built quality (which translates into long life) on certain cameras, aren't you going to strongly weigh that, especially if all else is equal?

Bottom line is it's a better product and if you don't offer that better product the customer easily goes elsewhere. That you needed to be told this is somewhat incredible.

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RE: Kodak used Sanyo?

By BillyBatson on 2/2/2006 3:13:32 AM , Rating: 2

you're also wrong. All basic cameras are built with the same quality, canon, kodak, sony, panasonic, pentax, whatever. So even if my camera broke down in 2 years i wouldn't blame that companies build quality since if i bought any of the other brands it would have broken down in the same time frame. So if i am happy witht he camera, worked well, great pics, etc, i am going to buy the same brand (if i was a normal end user and didn't realize that 2 offerings from the same company could be very different from one another... i would still do research) so no build quality doesn't always come into play. Besides they will last more than 2 years, i would say 5 years easy minimum if taken decent care of.
Also even if a digicam could last 50+ years i would still upgrade after 2-3 and sell off my old one since the newer one would have new features. You wouldn't keep a cellphone that would last 30 years for well 30 years.

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RE: Kodak used Sanyo?

By Big Al on 2/2/2006 5:09:31 AM , Rating: 2

Fascinating though your discussions about Kodak camera quality are, the news article is about Kodak deciding their technology tie-up with Sanyo has run it's course. Of course they haven't 'used' sanyo; they both benefitted from eachother's input in this field, just they decided they were advancing down one of the many soon-to-be-redundant avenues in rapidly advancing OLED technologies.

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