https://techcrunch.com/2022/07/12/nikon-slr-womp-womp/

If you’ve spent any time sitting around with grizzled old photography veterans, you’ve probably sat through more than your fair share of ‘Canon vs Nikon’ debates. Boring and pointless as they are, they were indicative of an industry where there were two major players and a bunch of also-rans. This week, reports suggest that Nikon might be bowing out of the Single Lens Reflex (SLR) race. If true, it’s hard to understate what a tremendous shift this is for the photography industry.

Over the past decade and a half, a number of things happened in quick succession. The compact camera market — which at one point represented more than 80% of camera sales by value — was utterly destroyed by smartphones. The increasingly capable smartphones, and the shift in how people relate to photography in general, started eating into the SLR market as well. With the vast majority of photos taken only finding their way onto social media, speed-to-share became more important than the overall image quality. And then a whole new type of camera came along.