Will Smartphone Photography Replace The Point-N-Shoot and DSLR Camera?

It is probably the worst kept secret to anyone following the photography industry but many camera manufacturers have been experiencing declining sales for the last few years. The main reason is due to changing customer preference and the advancement in many smartphone cameras.

Canon, the largest photographic equipment manufacturer in the world has experienced drops in profits in the last few quarters but they had a good 2017 and as you can see from the chart above, their market share has actually increased gradually from 2012 to 2017.

Canon may be a bright spot among its competitors and they have 93 reasons why not to fear smartphones but based on the most recent data published by CIPA, the Japan-based Camera and Imaging Products Association, sales have not improved much for the other manufacturers.

It seems mirrorless cameras offered the industry a bright spot for about two years but now sales are leveling off and the increase in sales may have been at the expense of the traditional DSLR market.
There is no question smartphones have taken away some sales from the low end point-and-shoot and DSLR camera segment, but the best way to keep a photographic company relevant is to come out with the state of the art product to convince serious photographers why it is still the traditional DSLR camera that takes the best photos. What is more important than the number of DSLR sold is the mix of the sales, since low end cameras like the Rebel and SL series bring considerably less profit than the higher end models like the EOS-5 and EOS-1 bodies.

My readers know, I am the Wildlife Ho-tographer using Canon equipment for almost 30 years. Through the decades, I have used almost all of Canon's cropped and full frame, film and digital cameras and lenses. You can see my equipment bag and works on MichaelDanielHo.com.

On my previous trips like the photo shoot in the Peruvian Amazon, I have used both my smartphone and DSLR cameras to take photos and find the two types of photography perfectly compatible with each other. More important than smart phones or cameras is a smart photographer, with the proper skill and experience to adapt and make the best of the situation at hand. I use the EOS-1D X Mk II and EOS-5Ds cameras as main bodies for my work.

93 Reasons Why Canon Shouldn't Fear Smartphone Photography

My readers know me as The Wildlife Ho-tographer, utilizing Canon equipment for over 30 years and traveling the globe on wildlife photo tours and how I feel about smartphone and mirrorless camera photography. You can follow my travels on Facebook  and Twitter , see my equipment bag and works on MichaelDanielHo.com.

The following article from Nikkei Asian Review puts it well why Canon has nothing to worry about the onslaught of smartphone and mirrorless cameras at this time.

TOKYO -- Quite a few photography buffs will tell you: The lens makes the camera. And for storied single-lens reflex camera manufacturers like Canon, lenses might be the secret to surviving the era of smartphone ubiquity, too.

The market for digital cameras peaked in 2010 and has been shrinking ever since. As smartphone cameras improve, fewer and fewer consumers see a need to lug around an SLR, or even a compact point-and-shoot. Shipments of single-lens cameras fell 11.1% on the year in 2016, by volume.

In response, camera companies are looking for a new niche, with features not found in smartphone cameras. Lenses -- from super telephoto models to ultrawide angles -- offer the manufacturers myriad ways to differentiate themselves. 

Over three decades, Canon has produced more than 130 million EF (Electro-Focus)-mount lenses for its SLRs, carving out a leading market share in Japan. The country's lens market has been shrinking since 2012, but this year it is expected to return to growth, and Canon is once again asserting itself with a wide variety of products.

Even as the domestic lens market was declining, Canon continued to ramp up production by 10 million units a year, on average. Total output of EF lenses surpassed 50 million units in 2009 and 100 million in 2014. 

The EF catalog features 93 lenses -- the broadest range of any Japanese camera maker. It includes EF Cinema lenses, developed for video shooting. Professional models with advanced features bear a distinctive red line around the barrel.

With an adapter, EF lenses can also be used on Canon's EOS M line of mirrorless cameras -- an increasingly popular type.

In 2015, Canon introduced an 11mm lens -- the widest angle in the world. All told, Canon controls 24% of the Japanese lens market, in terms of the number of products in use, according to statistics research company BCN released with its BCN Award 2017. That is nearly 10 percentage points higher than the 14.3% slice held by second-ranked Sigma.

Sigma and Tamron do give Canon a run for its money, but so far it has managed to fend them off.

Canon's reputation as an innovator keeps customers coming back to its lenses. In 1995, it became the first to introduce lenses equipped with image stabilization, which compensates for blur arising from shaky hands. In 2001, Canon introduced lenses that use laminated diffractive optical elements, leading to smaller, lighter models. And in 2015, the company wowed photographers with an 11mm ultrawide-angle lens that captures nearly the entire field of human vision in one shot. 

This is a technological edge Canon is likely to continue to sharpen, in this age where everyone has a camera in his or her pocket.