5000 jobs cuts at Fujifilm due to decrease in film sales, and a drop off in digital camera sales. Is Fujifilm next? Several of us here swear by Fujifilm... so, hopefully they will be able to restructure and survive.

http://www.photographyblog.com/index.php/weblog/comments/5000_job_losses_at_fujifilm/

I have this involuntary reflex of spacing out whenever words and phrases like "business segments" and "stragegies". I tried to read it, really I did!

Anyway, Kodak has done this a couple of times. Ilford went bankrupt (or the UK version of it) but are on the road to recovery, scaled back and under different management (employee buyout, wasn't it?). I think Agfa is either out of the film business or cut way back. The only one I hadn't heard about this from before is Fuji - and here we go. I always loved their slide films - they had a look like none of the others. I'm using past tense here because I'm not buying film anymore, just like a lot of other people. It's a business decision for them, nothing against the product. There's more to the problems with Kodak, Ilford and apparently Fuji than just film sales, but I've gotta believe that this is at the top of the list.

I sent my Fuji S2 in a week ago with a dead sensor - they have a service advisory and are replacing them for free (probably a repair that costs more than the value of the camera at this point). That's gotta be costly, multiplied out by how many cameras...

Honestly, I didn't read it all either. Fujifilm did say they will remain commited to film users though, so maybe they will still produce a good product in a variety. I don't think film is going to "die", it just isn't available in all the varieties it once was. Perhaps a film maker will find a way to reduce grain size in higher ISO, or some other options may become available. As long as we have an art community in this world, someone will still be demanding of any given medium, and some company will find a way to profit from it.