Photographer Compares Sales of Different Kinds of Cameras for 80 Years

Photographer Sven Skafisk studied data from the reports of the Camera & Imaging Products Association, which includes the major companies that produce photography equipment, and made a chart with the information about sales of different types of cameras in the past 80 years.

According to PetaPixel, one of the main conclusion that may be drawn from the chart is that the sales of compact digital cameras that used to be market leaders continue to drop, and the market is almost entirely dominated by mobile cameras.

“In a nutshell, photography is more popular than it has ever been,” Skafisk says. “But literally 98.4% of the consumer cameras sold in 2016 were built into smartphones – only 0.8% were compacts, 0.5% DSLRs, and 0.2% mirrorless.

Where will we go from here? There will always be people interested in larger, more ‘serious’ cameras, but an easy prediction is that smartphones will continue to get better, and compact camera sales will go to near-zero.”