The numbers are not deceiving: in 2020 mirrorless cameras finally surpassed SLRs in sales and all forecasts suggest that this is only going to grow. So, as we already mentioned, mirrorless have dethroned DSLR … However, years ago a much bigger enemy looms over the market: mobile phones.
In 2010 the digital camera market reached its zenith with sales of more than 121 million digital cameras according to data from the CIPA (Japanese industry association), while mobile sales already exceeded 300 million. From there, the cameras have only lowered and the smartphones climb stratospheric.
To get the idea, in 2019 a little more than 15 million digital cameras were sold, a more than considerable drop compared to 2010 and already a long way from mobile sales, which in 2015 reached their zenith with almost 1.5 billion terminals. As of 2017, mobile sales stagnated a bit, but in any case they have remained above the 1 billion terminals sold every year. Even with the drop in 2020, which of course also affected the photographic market.
This means that there are more than five billion smartphones worldwide (and this is data from 2017). Of course we cannot consider that all those people who have a mobile phone are photographers, but we can consider that millions of people around the world They carry a mobile with a camera daily in the pocket.
In FStoppers they encrypt it in 7.5 billion people that they are “potential photographers” thanks to the mobile; and for this reason they are convinced that, although mirrorless are the future of cameras, the future of photography is in smartphones.
What about the cameras then?
Does this mean that the cameras are on the way to disappear? I do not think so, although it certainly seems that they will continue to decline. The reasoning is as follows: before when someone wanted to take photos they needed to buy a camera; today the camera already carries it in your pocket, then you don’t have to invest anything else. However, if someone wants to take pictures in a more professional, intense or specialized way, cameras will always offer them a more suitable tool.
Of course this does not mean that some photographers may prefer the smartphones for your work, but I think cameras will always be better for taking photos because basically, they are a specialized tool For this, they offer some obvious and difficult to avoid advantages for mobile phones.
This is a bit like the movie crisis when home video appeared; Then it was said that it was going to be the death of cinema and, although it is true that it suffered a crisis, finally cinema has survived (and continues to do so now despite digital platforms). The reason? Basically because they are different things; both revolve around the same product (see a movie) but offer a different experience.
Of course, it would not be bad if the photography industry “put the batteries“in some way. And, as they say in the aforementioned article by FStoppersWhile many mobile phone manufacturers have sought collaboration with specialized photography brands, we have hardly (if ever) seen them do the opposite.
Only in recent years are we seeing computational photography (undoubtedly a central aspect in the photographic section of smartphones) somehow reaches conventional cameras, but certainly nothing that rivals what Apple phones offer or Google. It’s okay for camera manufacturers to innovate and seek to offer us increasingly capable cameras, but perhaps we should also think about look a little more for convergence with “the enemy that stalks”.