Jo and thread: Concentrating on lower resolution cameras isn't the only mistake. Kodak traditionally doesn't make money on cameras but on film, paper, processing, etc. In the world of conventional film and paper, this worked okay because Kodak was the largest producer of film and paper.
In the digital world, Kodak does not dominate the digital camera market, by a long shot, and the new policy is even worse for them in that respect. And of course, they don't even own stock in any producer of digital "film" such as SanDisk. In 1998, they shelled out $250 million for the dry x-ray business of Imation, at a time when that amount of money would have been able to purchase most of SanDisk! Great investors, those guys at Kodak.
What is not so well known is that until a couple of years ago, Kodak was also the leader in CCD (charge coupled device) technology, with very good quality, high resolution units made in small quantities for scientific applications. So even if Kodak didn't want to own a part of a company producing flash memories, it had a chance to obtain a strong position in one of the key components of digital imaging systems.
Kodak also studied whether it should increase its efforts to market color printers and paper for the individual (home) user. But this effort got a lower priority than the marketing of printer consoles to photofinishing stores. The assumption (wrong again) was that camera users (both conventional and digital) would like to make a special trip to the store to get prints, just the way they did it for conventional film, and that doing it yourself at home would be inconvenient.
Kodak rejected the idea of having a simple printer that would take a flash memory card directly, without need for a computer, and make acceptable 4x6 prints. They literally let Hewlett Packard and Olympus get a foothold in that market. Mistake after mistake. The cause is based on a disease that frequently afflicts older companies with entrenched bureaucracies. First priority becomes how to protect your own department, rather than how to enter new markets and acquire new technologies.
As I said before, there is going to be a lot of vacant factory space in Rochester.
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