Smartphone vs. Digital Camera

Published on: November 5, 2018 / Updated on: November 5, 2018 – Author: Konrad Wolfenstein

Smartphone vs. digital camera – @shutterstock | Bricolage

+++ Digital cameras are selling worse and worse +++ More and more photos thanks to smartphones +++ Selfies far more deadly than sharks +++ Are smartphones destroying the camera market? +++ Digital cameras: slow sellers +++ The victims of the smartphone boom +++

Digital cameras are selling worse and worse

More and more photos are being taken – but the digital camera has long since been dethroned as the most popular image source by the smartphone. As the infographic shows, sales of digital cameras have plummeted in recent years. The number of digital cameras in German households is also steadily declining. Those who have disposed of their cameras apparently often don't buy a new one. The industry is struggling – although action cameras and the revival of instant cameras are providing some glimmers of hope.

You can find more infographics at Statista.

More and more photos thanks to smartphones

According to a forecast published by Bitkom , humanity will take 1.2 trillion photos this year. The number of snapshots has risen sharply in recent years. This development is due to the increasing prevalence of smartphones, which are expected to account for 85 percent of all photos. In contrast, conventional digital cameras only have a market share of 10.3 percent.

You can find more infographics at Statista.

Selfies are far more deadly than sharks

According to Priceonomics, 28 people died in 2015 in connection with selfies. This makes the self-portraits so popular with many smartphone users significantly more dangerous to life and limb than, for example, sharks. Only eight people fell victim to the feared predators. The top of the list – certainly not meeting rigorous scientific standards – is death resulting from erotic self-strangulation. The most frequent selfie-related causes of death, by the way, are falls from great heights, drowning, and trains.

You can find more infographics at Statista.

Are smartphones destroying the camera market?

In 2010, companies organized in the Camera & Imaging Products Association (CIPA) (including Olympus, Casio, and Canon) sold 121 million cameras worldwide. This marked the end of a development that had, until then, moved almost exclusively in one direction. However, the end of this decades-long upward trend was already sealed by this point. In 2007, Apple had launched the first iPhone. While the two-megapixel digital camera it contained delivered only modest photo quality, the concept caught on, and cameras continued to improve. Today's smartphone cameras offer performance that simply makes purchasing an additional compact camera unnecessary. At least, that's how consumers see it: in 2017, CIPA companies sold only 25 million digital cameras.

You can find more infographics at Statista.

Slow-moving digital camera

“The best camera is the one that’s with you,” the famous US photographer Chase Jarvis once said. These days, that’s usually the camera on your smartphone. This trend is highly problematic for digital camera manufacturers. When Apple’s iPhone, the first modern mobile phone with a touchscreen, was launched in 2007, digital cameras sold exceptionally well. Manufacturers organized in the Camera & Imaging Products Association (including Olympus, Kodak, and Nikon) sold over 100 million units annually – mostly digital compact cameras. Last year, however, that figure had dropped to around 35 million. A new record low is looming for 2016: Between January and July, consumers worldwide bought just 13 million digital cameras.

You can find more infographics at Statista.

The victims of the smartphone boom

In 2007, Apple launched the first iPhone, propelling the smartphone to mainstream success. Since then, Germans alone have purchased over 160 million of these touchscreen phones. But from the very beginning, the smartphone has been more than just a mobile phone. Watching videos, listening to music, taking photos, navigating an unfamiliar city, and surfing the internet—these mobile all-rounders can do all this and much more. The outlook is less rosy, however, for all the devices whose functions the smartphone combines. In 2017, for example, only 686,000 MP3 players were sold. In the year the first iPhone was released, sales were around eight million. Digital camera sales have declined similarly sharply.

You can find more infographics at Statista.

Looking at the trend at Google, the once maximum value of 100 for popularity has now fallen to 3:

The term "smartphone" has stagnated:

This is where it gets interesting to delve deeper into the analysis.