The Camera That Killed Itself
Digital camera shipments, drawn to scale: up to the 2008 summit of 110 million point-and-shoots in one year, then a ~98% collapse — driven by the same cheap CMOS sensors that made cameras a mass market and then put one in every phone.
—credits6sourcesAll episodes
Data sources & references
02Camera price anchors (Dycam Model 1 1990 → Nikon COOLPIX L24 2011), constant 2025 dollars — BLS CPI-U annual averages
031991 Kodak professional DCS rig (~$20,000, 1.3 MP) — historical record
04CCD-vs-CMOS cost mechanism — 1995 NASA/JPL estimate; $3 sensor / $1 lens — IEEE Spectrum 2015 industry estimate
052012 UK camera-vs-phone survey (71% vs 45%) — Mintel