The data illustrates the sales of cameras and smartphones from 1951 to 2019.
Overall, camera sales increased steadily for several decades, but after reaching a peak in the late 2000s, they declined sharply. In contrast, smartphones experienced rapid growth after their introduction in the early 2000s and soon overtook cameras by a large margin.
Camera sales remained modest until the late 1970s, after which they began to rise more significantly. With the spread of digital cameras around 1997, the figure climbed above 30 million units and continued to grow, peaking at approximately 121 million around 2008. However, from about 2009,future demand for cameras dropped dramatically, falling to only about 15 million units by the end of the period.
Smartphone sales, on the other hand, rose almost exponentially. Starting from nearly 15 million in the early 2000s, they rapidly increased and surpassed cameras around 2011. Sales reached a high of almost 1.47 billion units by 2016 before falling slightly by around 120 million over the following years. The rapid spread of smartphones clearly coincided with, and likely caused, the sharp decline in the camera market.