Kodak’s judgement of consumer tastes was tragically myopic.
They didn’t get into the 35mm film business until very late, and never made a consumer 35mm negative-to-print film that was as good as Fuji’s.
Interesting bit of trivia ...
Originally, 35mm ‘cameras’ were used as light meters by the Hollywood movie industry, using movie film stock, hence the sprocket holes.
Rather than plunge into the 35mm camera market, where companies like Nikon were firmly entrenched, Kodak felt the consumer needed simplification, not f-stops and knobs to fiddle with. So that came up with the disc camera/film.
The film technology for the disc produced a picture so grainy, it was like viewing the scene through a lens smeared with cream of wheat. As to processing the disc negative, a Kodak VP was on hand to watch the first demonstration as the equipment took an undeveloped disc and flicked it out in the room, fatally exposing it and gaining the processor the nickname of ‘disc launcher.’
Eventually, Kodak adopted T-grain technology for the disc and the 110 film camera, which made possible grain-acceptable pictures all the way up to 5x7!
Venturing into digital photography, well, more like sticking in a tippy-toe, Kodak invested its future (and thereby forced the photofinishing industry to buy a bunch more equipment) in the IX-240, named APS for consumers, and deemed Another Piece of Shit by users. The camera produced some digital encoding, but still relied on film to take a picture and could make a decent 8x10! Progress!
Even when not dealing with the amateur market, Kodak was arthritis-ridden. Their R&D performance was so sluggardly that by the time new professional equipment reached the shipping dock, it was obsolete and outmoded.
Kodak was a product of its quasi-monopoly in the US: lazy, obese, and complacent.
With Kodak gone I wonder what has happened to the cattle bone industry.
Kodak used to be a huge market for chemically liquified cattle bones as the base to their film.