The Smartphone vs. the Camera Industry
There are 2 reasons for the decline of the DSLR camera.<p>The first is the complete lack of innovation. Without any meaningful APIs, end users cannot do much with their DSLR. There&#x27;s no app store where I can buy apps to enhance my DSLR. There&#x27;s a <i>lot</i> of room for creative photography if we could only program our own DSLRs. Smartphones, on the other hand, often do provide such APIs. This is how you get people doing astrophotography on a smartphone with a vastly inferior sensor.<p>The other reason is much more banal. For various reasons, people jumped to the DSRL bandwagon thinking that would make for better photos compared to more compact cameras (false for most people). DSLRs never should have become as popular as they did. In the film days you had simple compact cameras and SLRs. Only enthusiasts bought SLRs. That was the case in the early digital days, but then around 2005 people suddenly decided to switch to DSLRs, despite their not benefiting from them.<p>Over a decade later, people have realized that the eagerness with which they jumped to SLRs was misguided, and are now back to using something convenient. Unfortunately, camera manufacturers assumed this temporary rise in interest in DSLRs would be permanent.