After improvements made by producers in the following years, digital cameras became cheaper, smaller and often more convenient to use than traditional products. Kodak seriously underestimated how quickly the demand for this new technology would grow (Lucas Jr 2009). Kodak owned new technology, sales channels and reputation, which could have helped Kodak to dominate market. However, they did not exploit their own invention, and gave the opportunity to other companies. The new technology grew so quickly that made film cameras be eclipsed by digital products. Their inability to think forward resulted in their failure. Even though Kodak realized the power of digital industry many years later, their competitors had already developed new digital products and target markets. As a result, Kodak was too late to successfully complete transformation. .
The other case is the misjudgment of Chinese market. From middle of 1990s, Kodak hoped that the new Chinese middle class would buy lots of film, so they invest a lot of money and built 8000 new Kodak shops in China (Wu 2009). Chinese customers did bringing great benefits to Kodak for the first several years. However, customers found that "digital cameras were cooler ", and "many people leap-frogged from no camera straight to a digital one" (Economist 2012). There were two points Kodak ignored: the first one is, as we mentioned before, the emerging digital demand. The second one is the speed of China's development. Several decades ago, China was not prosperous, and not too many people had film cameras at home when film cameras were popular in western countries. However, due to the progress of China's economy, the quality of people's life has been improved a lot. Therefore, Chinese customers do not need those old-fashioned film cameras, and start buying new fashionable digital products. Eventually, those 8000 shops became Kodak's burden. Inability to read emerging markets correctly made Kodak lost heavily.