Image sensors is indeed one of the big opportunities that Kodak missed. But not because they didn't invest early; Kodak was one of the world's leading CCD image sensor manufacturers in the 1980s and 90s. I don't really know why that business didn't thrive, but they had an early lead in it. It's really too bad because, although it wasn't a huge business in the 90s, it is now, and it looks like a healthy growth sector for the long-term future as vision in one form or another gets added to every machine you can think of.
Fuji does have a diverse portfolio now, and makes a point of publicizing it, but that's been a long time in the making. What Fujifilm really did right, whether by great judgment, luck, or some of both, was they found one profitable, large-scale business that leveraged their experience and expertise and which they could make money in quickly, right when their film business was cratering. That was coatings for LCD panels, what Fuji calls "highly functional materials". That business saved Fuji from the kinds of wrenching problems that Kodak went through. They have other profitable businesses now -- they are even manufacturing COVID vaccines -- but the LCD coatings are what saved them back in the early 2000s. It's really a kind of serendipity when you think about it: they went from coating emulsions onto paper (and film, of course) in order to display images to coating anti-reflective and other coatings onto LCD panels that display images.
Of course Fuji deserves a lot of credit for identifying that opportunity and executing decisively to take advantage of it. Lots of people know this I'm sure, but Fuji's CEO wrote a book about it, which is an interesting read. He is clearly a hard-nosed fellow.
https://www.amazon.com/Innovating-Out-Crisis-Fujifilm-Vanishing/dp/1611720230
