Is Qantas becoming the Kodak of the airline world !

[peterk]

Interesting view!

Qantas becoming the Kodak of the airline world

 

[dajop]

Interesting, although a bit inaccurate:

If they want to shovel $3 billion of their dirhams (the United Arab Emirates currency) into Virgin Australia and in so doing create Australian jobs and offer competition to a former monopolist like Qantas, then I say: “Well done. Keep the dirhams coming.”
....

The US has, without foreign involvement, a plethora of domestic carriers, while only with Arab money do Australian consumers have the option not to fly with the near monopolistic marsupial.

Of course forgetting about the dollars (Kiwi and Singapore) being shovelled into Virgin. And I wouldn't call New Zealand and Singapore particularly Arab states!

 

[harvyk]

What, are star trek style teleporters taking over the airline world and QF the only one who is not on board with the new technology? Unless that is the case I think the example of Kodak is pretty inaccurate.

The problem with Kodak is their business literally changed on them. They where the best in the world when it came to film, and they had pegged on film still being a medium in 200 years time. The problem was that the world moved onto digital, an arguably much better technology and in a very short period of time. The main product which Kodak sold was no longer required and they did not have any major inroads with any replacement products.

Take Qantas on the other hand, their main business is air travel and air freight. Short of star trek style teleporters / some other ultra high speed transport becoming the new in fashion way from traveling from A to B, air travel will remain as king for traveling long distance. That is not to say that they are not fumbling around, but a lot of legacy carriers are fumbling around trying to work out what to do with LCC's. This is a very different proposition to having your core business no longer useable by the majority of your former customers through no fault of your own.

 

[codash1099]

What, are star trek style teleporters taking over the airline world and QF the only one who is not on board with the new technology? Unless that is the case I think the example of Kodak is pretty inaccurate.

The problem with Kodak is their business literally changed on them. They where the best in the world when it came to film, and they had pegged on film still being a medium in 200 years time. The problem was that the world moved onto digital, an arguably much better technology and in a very short period of time. The main product which Kodak sold was no longer required and they did not have any major inroads with any replacement products.

Take Qantas on the other hand, their main business is air travel and air freight. Short of star trek style teleporters / some other ultra high speed transport becoming the new in fashion way from traveling from A to B, air travel will remain as king for traveling long distance. That is not to say that they are not fumbling around, but a lot of legacy carriers are fumbling around trying to work out what to do with LCC's. This is a very different proposition to having your core business no longer useable by the majority of your former customers through no fault of your own.

Remember that Kodak were early into digital (not sure, but it may even have been their invention) but were afraid it would wreck their film business. So they decided not to go forward but to simply defend their turf, with well known results. They ceased being a leader and were more concerned with self-preservation.In this respect, the comparison with QF has some validity.

 

[harvyk]

Remember that Kodak were early into digital (not sure, but it may even have been their invention) but were afraid it would wreck their film business. So they decided not to go forward but to simply defend their turf, with well known results. They ceased being a leader and were more concerned with self-preservation.In this respect, the comparison with QF has some validity.

They more used digital to support their film business. Things like scanning and image manipulation software / kiosks was meant to be used to digitize film negatives / prints. They also stepped sort of into using other formats for image storage, for example many early CD-R's where made by Kodak, but that was to support their photo-CD format where again the idea was to use film to create the original images which could then be replayed on a TV via a pretty expensive player.

The advent of the true digital camera where there was no film still knocked Kodak for 6.

I still remember the first time I played around with a "digital camera" in the early 90's. It involved hooking up a video camera to an Amiga, it took about a minute to get a black and white image, it took nearly 5 minutes to get a colour image, and a colour image involved holding a coloured gel over the lens of the camera, first Red, then Green, then Blue. Back then Kodak had nothing to fear from digital. Furthermore those original images had nothing on the resolution of even the highest speed (which was the most grainy) / cheapest 35mm film.

 

[SeatBackForward]

I can see the analogy

Kodak stuck to what they knew and didn't move into space they may have done well on - digital technology . Qantas isn't sticking with they know and are moving more into banking (through their FF scheme) where realistically they wont be able to compete.

Oh.

 

[rickylee]

I think there are elements of similarity but the nature of business transformation is quite different.

Qantas is not in an industry where their products and services are obsolete. In that sense, they are unlike Kodak.

It is simply a series of bad decisions (not buying the Boeing 777s, expanding Jetstar into HKG, partnership with EK, etc.) that may have combined to make themselves uncompetitive and then they sought to defend their turf by cutting costs and thus challenging customer loyalty and market share, instead of seeking to either innovate or focus on customer retention to boost revenue, just as Kodak sought to defend their analogue turf rather than lead the digital camera revolution. In that sense, they are similar to Kodak.