> To claim that smartphones are a replacement for P&S cameras is I think misguided.
There's a joke that asks, "what is the best camera?" The punchline is, "whichever camera you have with you when you need to take a picture." To me, this captures why smartphones beat P&S, even for vacation photos. The difference in quality just isn't that large. I just spent six months traveling and almost never used my P&S. Even when I had both on me, my phone was just more accessible. And P&S can't match the sharing functionality of a smartphone. Even on vacation, when I take a photo I liked, I want to put it on Instagram without having to use a computer.
I see a market that has no middle. You're either a professional who needs the absolute best quality or you're not and want something that takes acceptable photos as quickly as possible. Other than that, there's only the specialty market (action, drone, underwater, etc), which is small by comparison. But smartphones are now good enough that the market for P&S is vanishingly small.
There's a joke that asks, "what is the best camera?" The punchline is, "whichever camera you have with you when you need to take a picture." To me, this captures why smartphones beat P&S, even for vacation photos. The difference in quality just isn't that large. I just spent six months traveling and almost never used my P&S. Even when I had both on me, my phone was just more accessible. And P&S can't match the sharing functionality of a smartphone. Even on vacation, when I take a photo I liked, I want to put it on Instagram without having to use a computer.
I see a market that has no middle. You're either a professional who needs the absolute best quality or you're not and want something that takes acceptable photos as quickly as possible. Other than that, there's only the specialty market (action, drone, underwater, etc), which is small by comparison. But smartphones are now good enough that the market for P&S is vanishingly small.