This Latest Camera Sales Chart Reveals the Death of the Compact Camera

Things aren’t looking good for the standalone point-and-shoot camera. As smartphone cameras continue to improve, compact camera sales continue to nosedive. A new historical sales chart with 2016 figures shows just how quickly point-and-shoots are dying off.

Photographer Sven Skafisk took the latest 2016 CIPA camera production data and created the chart above showing that compact cameras have continued to decline while DSLR and mirrorless camera sales seem to have stabilized a bit.

Want to see why compact camera sales have been plummeting? Take a look at what the full updated chart looks like when smartphone sales are fully displayed:

Here’s a smaller version of the same image to give you a better idea of how the volumes compare:

“In a nutshell, photography is more popular than it has ever been – take a look at the rise of Instagram or Snapchat, for example,” Skafisk tells PetaPixel. “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? An easy prediction is that smartphones will continue to get better, and compact camera sales will go to near-zero,” he continues. “There will always be people interested in larger, more ‘serious’ cameras, and the camera companies that listen to these people and meet their needs will be fine.”