Today’s Question: What do camera manufacturers need to do to remain relevant in a smartphone-camera world?
Tim’s Quick Answer: If camera manufacturers want to remain relevant in photography long-term, my feeling is that they’ll eventually need to start manufacturing their own smartphones.
More Detail: Today’s question is actually one that was submitted for a panel discussion at the Smoky Mountains Photo Fest event that I had the privilege of speaking at recently. We ran out of time to address the question, so I wanted to share my thoughts here.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I still think there is a significant market for dedicated digital cameras, I just think that market will start to diminish over time. For example, I would expect there won’t be any new digital SLR camera models in about five years.
Mirrorless camera sales have actually been increasing over the years, and represent a significant market. I suspect a significant portion of the sales of mirrorless cameras are photographers transitioning away from digital SLR cameras, which makes sense in the context of the sales statistics for both.
What I think is perhaps more significant is that smartphone sales represent more than 100 times the sales of dedicated cameras. Granted, those smartphones aren’t purchased primarily as cameras at least by the vast majority of users, but they are used for many types of photography by a huge number of people. And that includes a decent number of professional photographers, by the way.
I believe these trends will continue. Combined with the fact that smartphone cameras have dramatically improved in terms of image quality, features, and control, I think photographers will increasingly realize that much of their photography could be handled with a smartphone, which after all provides an incredibly convenient photography solution that most of us carry with us pretty much at all times.
But I should emphasize that none of this is to suggest that photography will be diminished by these changes. Quite the contrary, I think that as smartphone cameras continue to improve there will only be greater enthusiasm for photography. As long as AI doesn’t diminish that interest in photography, I suppose.
