Let's mash this up with the evil HP business model that's on the front page. Kodak could have sold digital cameras that required Kodak DRMed flash cards that you would have to pay to erase and reuse. And maybe the photos could be further DRMed so you'd have to take the flash card to a certified Kodak lab.
And how exactly would that have competed with five hundred other brands that didn't pull that trick? The market eventually rejected even the soft-lockin of nonstandard memory cards (think of the 12 slots nobody ever uses that come with every SD/CompactFlash reader)
I'm not even sure it was the first wave of digital cameras that did them in-- people bought boatloads of digital Kodaks in the 2000s. I recall they were very big on dock ecosystems-- drop the camera on a base to charge it, and I think they had some printer docks. That should have helped to differentiate them from cheap Olympus/Nikon/Canon/etc. point-and-shoot cameras.
Yeah, there wasn't the residual income but there was a fair bit of an upgrade cycle for a few years to make up for it, which could have bought them time to find a solid place in the market.
I think the problem was the second wave: the point-and-shoot consumer camera disappeared (outside of novelties like Instax). After 2015 or so, you're either looking at interchangeable lens systems or other prosumer/pro-level kit, or you're using a phone. Kodak never made much of an inroad in the pro-level digital market, and I'm not sure they had a business adaptable to cameraphone sales-- I don't think they made their own sensors or optics, so a licensing or subcontracting business would have nothing to offer.
My first digital camera was a Sony compact that would only take Sony Memory Sticks - one of those 12 slots you mentioned. I got tired of paying twice as much for half the memory of standard cards, so I made sure my next camera took SD.
Kodak was always a big player in the camera business, but they did it to increase the film business - they wanted people taking and printing as many pictures as possible, because that's where the real money was. It's hard today to imagine the scale of that business. And that's the problem, if Kodak had sold every single sensor that went into every single digital camera, it wouldn't have been enough to save them.
> And how exactly would that have competed with five hundred other brands that didn't pull that trick?
I think I agree with the point you're making but I still feel obligated to point out that cheaper and better printer (like the brother laser pointed in the other thread) isn't stopping HP from making huge bank with their ink scam for decades.
