Yes, there is. The financial situations of both Kodak and Ilford/Harman illustrate this. Both are kept afloat on the basis of shareholders who accept that there is no return on investment, only because the alternative is to lose their investments altogether. Adox/Impex clearly argues for higher sales prices in order to make the necessary investments possible to keep their business running - not even talking about expansion. While this is not explicitly stated as such, it seems likely that companies like Impex and currently also Ferrania rely to a large extent on the willingness of their employees to invest more time into their work than they are paid for, out of sheer passion for what they do (in the case of Ferrania, this is quite clearly visible, in the case of Impex, it is only implied). Fuji's price hikes and product discontinuations shows that keeping regular film in production, both color and B&W but Instax excluded, is not viable and certainly not attractive. With virtually every major manufacturer struggling to remain in this market, it is quite obvious that the current market prices are not sustainable. There are no slack resources left in this market whatsoever, making every manufacturer extremely vulnerable for inevitable occurrences such as economic downturns, supply interruptions or materials becoming unavailable in the quality currently used.
Interesting how you seem to contradict yourself within the scope of two sentences. I frankly don't have a clue what you mean, but then again, this is true 80% of the time.
Gee, I wonder why they didn't think of that. You're stepping over the catch-22 remark I made earlier. Let's do it again: redesigning the photographic materials manufacturing business in order to become more agile, geared towards things like much smaller batches (while maintaining acceptable quality levels) and more flexibility in the quality of source materials, requires substantial investments in redesigning both products and production processes. For the big, diversified player (i.e. Fuji), this investment makes no business sense due to the uncertain and most likely marginal outlook of the market. For the smaller, more specialized players (i.e. Impex, Foma, and by extension even Kodak en Harman), access to capital and the costs of capital is not in line with their financial capabilities. You mentioned venture capitalists (I assume that's what you meant by 'RISC investors'), but they are unlikely to step into this business, except if they see some valuable assets that they can sell off in a short period of time, effectively disintegrating the company in question.
One of the more likely ways out of the situation is further consolidation, which we currently see in the situation of Harman, which is trying to make the most of its manufacturing capacity by acting as a toll manufacturer for other brands than Ilford. Indeed, we have already seen a vertical disintegration at both Ilford and Kodak with the market-end splitting off from the manufacturing-end, and this has paved the way for consolidation, specialization and hence further shake-out. It would not surprise me if there will be a development towards two types of manufacturing firms in this market:
1. Relatively large-volume manufacturing of a limited number of stocks for a few major brands, geared towards efficiency and possibly/hopefully fair quality control, but not necessarily very flexible.
2. Smaller specialized firms consisting of only a few people running a more flexible operation, manufacturing specialty materials that may come and go as these businesses fail and succeed, more likely than not with variable product quality, but potentially interesting offerings.
Whatever happens, the current situation with massive overcapacity in relation to current and expected demand will change one way or another. In the process towards that change, further discontinuations of products, price increases and a bankruptcy here and there will most likely be part of the developments.
I'd like to see your analysis of the price elasticity of photographic film, supported by empirical data and a conceptual model capturing the underlying mechanisms. Lacking this, I remain with the fairly safe assumption that you've glanced briefly at an Economics 101 textbook at some point and now believe you thoroughly understand how specific markets work.
Kodak is struggling. They were 'forced' by bankruptcy into the hands of owners who face losing their investments and therefore pray that their wobbly boat remains afloat. I am not at all convinced that Kodak has managed to restructure their business in the ways necessary to meet the needs of the photographic materials business. In fact, in their communications, they emphasize entirely different markets that they seem to have higher hopes for, suggesting that their commitment to photography is more a matter of necessity than of strategic thinking.
This is the first and the last time I'll take the time to go into one of your ramblings on the photographic market in detail. As someone else said before: it makes no sense to discuss this with you, as your argument is consistently erratic and lacks common (business) sense. You're entitled to your opinion, of course, as am I. So let's agree to disagree, and let's see what the market does in due course. In the end, no one can predict the future.