Sirius Glass
Subscriber
The key to digital is the camera. I always thought of Kodak cameras as being second best to Japanese and German. Sony, a tech firm, understood that they didn't know cameras. Of course, being Japanese, they were in a better position to buy a great Japanese camera company. But I think Kodak just was too self-centered to look to others and maybe felt it was beneath them to buy a camera company. They were used to being in control and didn't see other film makers as real competition. Many times people get stuck in the past doing what they do best. It;s really hard to let go and try something different. How many people give up their career field in midlife to try something different?
Kodak at one time owned Graflex and Graphic and as a result of the loss of a court case, Kodak was considered a monopoly, stripped of those two companies, prohibited from selling film with processing in the US. That decision still holds and Kodak cannot by or take over a camera company. This has been discussed over the years on APUG and Photrio and is well known by photographers in the US and elsewhere in the world.