Nobody knows what's going to happen, friend.
Ask any of the long-term marketers for any of the major camera manufacturers, they'll tell you they were happily stunned by digital photography's market acceleration in the early 'aughts. Sure, they all anticipated that digital tech would grow the business--but Canon and Nikon had planned to keep making lines of film camera bodies for at least a decade longer than they eventually did. Digital and DSLRs, particularly, grew so much faster, got so much bigger than they'd imagined. They’d expected at least some professionals to hesitate; almost none did. It was like flipping a switch—professional photography went digital in an instant. And the causal, point+shoot customers bought waaaaay higher-level product than anticipated. I promise you, Nikon did not conceive the D100 with casual soccer mom-tographers in mind—but the market caught fire and almost overnight these companies were in the business of selling multi-thousand-dollar system cameras to whole new markets of point+shooters.
The 2004 Nikon F6 gives us some insight into Nikon’s wild ride. People now talk about the F6 as a kind of "passion project," a "swan song" for film photography that Nikon released as a loving kiss goodnight; but that's just bunky revisionist history. Bringing the F6 to market took years and significant R&D expense--new counter-weighted shutter, new mirror box geometry, completely new film advance tech. Nikon clearly expected there to be a long-term pro market for it. Yet by the time it arrived . . . ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Five years later, the camera companies clearly didn't see the smartphone coming.
But isn't it fair to ask what the smartphone manufacturers, computational imaging developers, and social media overlords can't see coming? Why do we believe they're omniscient? OK, so they made a few good bets that drank Canon's and Nikon's milkshake (as well as many others); but so what? Nobody's winning streak lasts forever.
Let me suggest something to you: Zuckerberg and his peers certainly didn't see the present of social media coming. I promise you that Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger did not imagine the commercial "influencer" economy when they created Instagram. The early developers of Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube certainly didn't foresee nation-states weaponizing their platforms for misinformation campaigns and election interference. They didn't imagine governments using their software and networks to coordinate genocides; they didn't envision extremist / terror organizations like ISIS uploading content to radicalize and recruit. They didn't foresee mass-shooters live-streaming their conquests or victims live-streaming their demise.
Sure, Zuckerberg & co. knew they were creating competition for old-media organizations like newspapers and magazines; but not in their wildest dreams did they imagine that, by 2019, their competition would knock out most local newspapers of record around the United States. I mean, just imagine asking Zuck in 2010: "What do you think about putting every newspaper in the country out of business? How will democracy work if 95% of the population isn't informed of what's happening where they live? Who will hold local governments accountable?" He'd have thought you were nuts to lay that at his feet.
I pick my examples here purposefully, friend. Because not all is well in smartphone-socialworld. Regulation is coming. Antitrust investigations are looming. People are tiring of big tech's endless databreaches, privacy scams, and bait-switch business practices. We’re exhausted by the extremists, gaslighters, and wanton idiots that smartphone world has foisted into our daily lives or, worse, into positions of responsibility. And a growing number of people are sick of working 24/7 because their smartphone makes them available to work 24/7. Ten years ago smartphones were miraculous. Today the relationship is decidedly more complicated. Ask yourself if this present we're living with smartphones, right now, is the one Steve Jobs imagined when he walked out on that Macworld stage in January 2007.
Most importantly: smartphone sales are flat, or in decline. Everybody who wants one, has one; most people are turning them over less often than in past. And nobody's sure how to make the market start growing again. Sound familiar?
Here's another thing to consider: most smartphone-related services are chronically unprofitable. The "frightful five," Amazon, Apple, Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, sure--they make money. But Uber burns $1B a quarter. (!!!) Spotify? Red. Netflix? Deep in the red. How about Dropbox? Nope, losses. Surely Snapchat is in the black? Nope, they burned $1.3B in 2018. They all burn money, year after year after year. At some point, it's reasonable to imagine that investors are going to ask when a return is coming.
So friend, don't count cameras out. Canon and Nikon might be in tough shape, but they aren't burning a billion dollars in losses a quarter. Nobody knows what's going to happen; nobody knows how attentions, economies, attitudes, enthusiasms, fashions and trends will shift. The existence of compelling technology doesn't, alone, guarantee its future. Sure, computational photography seems like it'll be a big deal--like maybe it even should be a big deal; but so did manned space exploration in July, 1969.
clients love it. 
