In some respects I suspect that this has been inevitable. Outside of professionals, and a few well-to-do amateurs, photography has always revolved around sharing with those in your own circle.
This is evidenced with the huge sales success of the Brownie, the folding medium format camera, and the Leica for the more successful, moving from there on to the millions of fixed lens 35mm cameras sold after World War II which morphed into what we fondly call 35mm point and shoot cameras. Then came digital with the huge volumes of small, point and shoot digital cameras which have now changed to camera phones.
Prior to the internet, and sharing through social media, everyone got little 4x6 prints from their local one-hour photo place. A lot of people I know either threw the negatives into a large box and promptly forgot about them, or they actually threw the negs away. Once digital and the internet took hold it became fashionable to share your prints over the internet and the photo developers adapted by providing CDs. Now with the smartphones you can share immediately and photo labs are dying off quicker than the dodo bird.
The growth in SLR cameras beginning in the 60s, and dSLR cameras that started around 2000, was always a side effect of the growth in affluence in a number of countries. I believe that the stall we see right now is caused by many factors, economic malaise, growth in options like smartphones, and even the quality of many cameras being sold today. Finally, the industry itself is beginning to stall. The last couple of photokinas is evidence of this. There has been a general increase in quality at the bottom of the ladder, and a compression of quality at the top end. But, unless I missed something (and I could have), there has been no real breakthroughs in digital technology.
The same thing is happening to technology as a whole. The computer market has been suffering the same pains. Neither computers nor cameras are breakthrough products, they are quickly becoming consumer objects. Face it, none of us may be able to afford every technological marvel we want, but most of us can afford one or two if we really want them. Forty inch flat screen TVs are becoming commonplace. Walk through any airport in the world and you will literally see thousands of smartphones in continual use. Computers have become the new charity objective, distributing $100 laptops to children all over the world.
This does mean one thing though, competition will become fierce over the next few years. The drops in price for full frame dSLRs has only just begun. Feature lists will begin to climb, and prices will quickly plummet, for all types of digital cameras. I can already buy a full-featured, APSc digital SLR with over 16 megapixels, that will take astounding low light images, complete with an interchangeable zoom lens for $500 or less on the street in the US.
And I can carry it out into a pouring rainstorm and take all the pictures I want. And I can walk back in the house, throw it on the kitchen counter, let it dry off on its own, and go out and do the same all over again the very next day. Heck, I have a digital rangefinder from a top of the line company that will remain un-named, that cost me almost $7,000 only two years ago, and it will fry its' electonic circuits within minutes if I tried to do the same with it.
It won't happen immediately, but I suspect that the entire digital camera industry is about to be up-ended, and the companies that are not able to change, and change quickly, will find it a bit tough to stay afloat.
