Skip to main content

Study: More Americans shunning point-and-shoots in favor of smartphone cameras

camera phoneAs the tech inside smartphone devices continues to improve, more and more people are choosing to leave their stand-alone cameras and video cameras at home, according to data from market research company NPD.

Its study involving US adults found that this year 27 percent of photos were taken using a smartphone such as Apple’s iPhone, 10 percent up on the previous year. In contrast, photos taken with stand-alone cameras dropped from 52 percent to 44 percent.

Commenting on the findings, executive director and senior imaging analyst at NPD Liz Cutting said, “There is no doubt that the smartphone is becoming ‘good enough’ much of the time; but thanks to mobile phones, more pictures are being taken than ever before.”

She added that consumers were more likely to use their smartphone than a stand-alone camera to capture spontaneous moments, but that “for important events, single purpose cameras or camcorders are still largely the device of choice.”

NPD’s figures are borne out by data from Flickr earlier in the year that showed the iPhone 4 surpassing Nikon’s D90 dSLR camera as the most commonly used camera for snappers posting pictures on the popular photo-sharing website. In Flickr’s current smartphone-only chart, four of the top five positions are held by various models of Apple’s iPhone.

The trend highlighted by NPD’s findings is likely to continue for some time as smartphone technology improves and such devices get into the hands of more and more people around the world.

However, the data certainly doesn’t spell the demise of camera specialists such as Nikon and Canon. While serious photographers may well be happy to snap a few shots with a smartphone, they’ll also be keen to keep their bag of camera bodies and lenses firmly by their side.

Indeed, manufacturers of feature-rich cameras such as dSLRs can look to the future without too much trepidation; NPD also found that sales of detachable lens cameras increased by 12 percent over the last year.

[via Cnet]

Editors' Recommendations

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
With the Pixel 8, Google needs to fix a nagging camera problem
iPhone 14 Pro and Pixel 7 Pro camera modules.

It's almost clockwork now. You get a smartphone, and there are multiple options with differing numbers of cameras. Almost every phone comes with an ultrawide lens, but if you want the best zoom, you need to have the best, largest, and most expensive phone in a particular line.

Ultrawide cameras are fun. They're great for capturing wide-ranging scenery photos or goofy meme pics, but zoom cameras are great too — and for many reasons. Parents with young kids, people with pets, or just smartphone photographers who want to frame pictures in interesting ways would appreciate having one. It's time to unshackle the zoom lens from expensive phones
The Apple effect and the SuperRes Zoom solution

Read more
The future of blood oxygen monitoring lies with your phone’s camera
Measuring SpO2 with smartphone camera and flash

Smartphones are already capable of some neat health-centric tricks. From step counting and sleep tracking to measuring pulse and respiration rate, the phone in your pocket is quite a powerful-health monitoring machine. Now, a team of scientists from the University of Washington is looking to add blood oxygen level measurement to that bag of tricks.

In a paper published inNJP Digital Medicine, the team details what it calls the “first clinical development validation on a smartphone camera-based SpO2 sensing system.” To put it simply, the team developed an algorithm and proved that smartphones could measure the blood oxygen saturation level to the same baseline level as approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for over-the-counter pulse oximeters.

Read more
Insta360’s next camera could be amazing for lowlight photography
Inspired imaging teaser image featuring swirling stars over a dark landscape.

Insta360 has a new camera on the horizon, the latest in what has been something of a hot streak this year for the company. The new teaser image it just released depicts a landscape with swirling star trails in the sky overhead, and features the phrase “inspired imaging,” possibly hinting at a connection to astrophotography.

The teaser video, titled “Our Next Camera," also heavily features astrophotography and other lowlight imagery, which backs up that initial impression. Swirling stars, floating lanterns, a concert/party, nighttime amusement park rides, the aurora borealis, and dimly lit hallways are all displayed in passing. I’m always looking to up my lowlight photo and video game, and gear that helps me capture astrophotography footage is definitely appealing.

Read more