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The Rise of Digital imaging and the Fall of the Old Camera industry
- Thread starter johnastovall
- Start date
R
Ranger 9
Guest
I read it and it IS interesting. I wish he had given more attention, though, to a factor that he mentions only briefly but which I suspect is widely important: the "looter management" syndrome, in which a new owner buys a company that's behind the technology curve but has a respected brand name; hypes its prospects to industry analysts; loads it up with unsustainable amounts of debt; and then cashes out, leaving the company to stagger off into the financial wilderness.
N
nei1
Guest
Buisiness is the cruelest of the arts.
johnastovall
Deceased, but remembered fondly here...
Oh, that is great.
woodyspedden
New member
Just an observation.
The semiconductor industry is facing a crisis. Because of the implications of Moore's law the industry now produces chips with extremely low average selling prices (relatively) and at unheard of volumes.
Building a new fab (a plant where the chips are produced) can be as much as $3 Billion! So new fabs and old fab extensions (to produce the needed volumes) have a fantastic cost and further erodes profits.
This is not so new, but previously new applications were developed where state of the art chips were the solutions. Here the technology drove lower volumes of chips at way higher average selling prices. These were the chips that drove payback on the super expensive fabs which some years later were also producing high volumes of the same chips and others at much lower average selling prices.
Competition has forced the semiconductor producers to continue the spend (new fabs) cycles while seeing very short durations for the high average selling prices of new technology parts. Thus the crisis! Industry consolidation seems to be the only solution long term so that some level of price stability can be maintained. A look at the P&L and Balance Sheets of the major producers and the ancillary industries such as the Equipment Manufacturers like Applied Materials and Lam Research, shows the problems clearly.
It will be interesting to see if strategies emerge to once again make the industry leaders profitable, as before. If indeed the industry has now turned into producing commodity products profitability and R&D spending will suffer considerably and a whole new business model will be required.
This has major implications for the photographic industry as a consequence.
Interesting times ahead.
Woody
The semiconductor industry is facing a crisis. Because of the implications of Moore's law the industry now produces chips with extremely low average selling prices (relatively) and at unheard of volumes.
Building a new fab (a plant where the chips are produced) can be as much as $3 Billion! So new fabs and old fab extensions (to produce the needed volumes) have a fantastic cost and further erodes profits.
This is not so new, but previously new applications were developed where state of the art chips were the solutions. Here the technology drove lower volumes of chips at way higher average selling prices. These were the chips that drove payback on the super expensive fabs which some years later were also producing high volumes of the same chips and others at much lower average selling prices.
Competition has forced the semiconductor producers to continue the spend (new fabs) cycles while seeing very short durations for the high average selling prices of new technology parts. Thus the crisis! Industry consolidation seems to be the only solution long term so that some level of price stability can be maintained. A look at the P&L and Balance Sheets of the major producers and the ancillary industries such as the Equipment Manufacturers like Applied Materials and Lam Research, shows the problems clearly.
It will be interesting to see if strategies emerge to once again make the industry leaders profitable, as before. If indeed the industry has now turned into producing commodity products profitability and R&D spending will suffer considerably and a whole new business model will be required.
This has major implications for the photographic industry as a consequence.
Interesting times ahead.
Woody