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Nobody has watched Polaroid's growth with keener interest than the chiefs of Kodak, the Rochester giant built on George Eastman's first "little black box" in 1888. Kodak has undoubtedly lost ground to Polaroid but is still a mammoth company which had sales last year of $3 billion from photo products, synthetic fibers (Kodel) and chemicals.
Eastman's successors are developing many innovative cameras of their own. Besides producing the new pocket Instamatics, which are expected eventually to outnumber the 60-million old-size units in use, Kodak in the last year has scored an important breakthrough in motion-picture photography. It has brought out two new 8-mm. cameras and a high-speed Ektachrome film that enable photographers to shoot movies indoors with no special lighting. In fact, the cameras produce adequate close-in pictures even when the only lighting is the candle power of a lit-up birthday cake. The bother of setting up floodlights has previously been the main drag on sales of movie cameras, which are now used by only 13% of U.S. families.
Even so, Kodak is painfully embarrassed at finding itself so far behind in instant photography. Convinced for years that Polaroid could never find a camera inexpensive enough to tap the mass market, Kodak's chiefs were finally toppled from their complacency by the success of the Polaroid Swinger in the mid-'60s, and they ordered a hurry-up research project into an alternate system of instant photography. Land was no longer simply an ingenious inventor and customer; he was an enlarging and possibly troublesome competitor. Kodak executives were surprised by the high quality of the color prints produced by Land's small new camera.
Kodak reports that it is pouring "very substantial funds" into instant photography. Land says that Kodak researchers still "don't know where they're going" with an instant process. Some stock analysts, however, believe that the company plans to market its own instant film process for use in Polaroid cameras as early as 1973. These experts are convinced that any camera buff—even a Polaroid owner—would automatically have faith in a new yellow-box product. Meanwhile, there is much speculation that Kodak and Polaroid are racing each other to introduce —some time in the next few years—instant slides and instant movie film.
Certainly Kodak is eager to make and market instant-photo cameras, but that will not be easy. Polaroid employs no fewer than 25 patent attorneys, who have erected a blockade of some 1,000 patents around the Polaroid process. Though rights to the original Land inventions in instant photography have long since expired, no would-be competitor has been able to jump ahead of those that are still tightly protected. Thus, to an astonishing degree, Polaroid has no direct competition.