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# The iPhone rules Flickr - and is pushing other cameras into niches
- URL: https://onemanandhisblog.com/2016/12/iphone-flickr-niches-stand-alone-cameras/
- Published: 2016-12-08T15:36:30.000Z
- Updated: 2016-12-08T15:36:30.000Z
- Author: Adam Tinworth
- Tags: cameras, DSLRs, flickr, gopro, om malik, photography

Flickr has published [its annual round-up of the most-used cameras](http://blog.flickr.net/2016/12/06/smartphones-dominate-flickr-in-2016-apple-leads/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com). Guess which one wins?

![Flickr top cameras 2016](https://i0.wp.com/www.onemanandhisblog.com/content/images/2016/12/flickr-top-camera-1.jpg?resize=362%2C400&ssl=1 "flickr-top-camera.jpg")

Apple, of course, is a proxy for “iPhone” here. The iPhone is the biggest camera brand on Flickr by a significant margin. And I bet you it would be an ever bigger margin on Instagram.

> Smartphones accounted for 48% of the photos uploaded to Flickr, up from 39% last year. DSLR was 25%, down from 31% in 2015, and point and shoot was 21%, down from 25% in 2015\. Mirrorless remained flat at 3% of photos uploaded in 2016.

I’m vaguely surprised by the low numbers for mirrorless cameras – that makes me wonder if the community that have adopted them haven’t found themselves a home on Flickr. Or perhaps the mirrorless hype has been over-blown.

## Where the phone won’t go

Om Malik speculates about what these figures means for [the future of the stand-alone camera](http://om.co/2016/12/07/again-iphone-is-the-default-camera/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com):

> We are already seeing cameras evolve and become hyper specialized — Snapchat’s Spectacles, GoPro Cameras and Drone-mounted cameras for aerial work. I suspect by the time 2020 rolls around the point and shoot share of overall photography just might be down to single digits.

It feels like stand-alone cameras are being pushed into the niches that phones can’t comfortably fill: you don’t want you phone hundreds of feet away in the sky, nor do you want to strap it to your bike for filming – because it’s more likely to be destroyed in an accident, and the battery won’t hold up as well as a dedicated camera. But these are edge cases, suitable for niche companies.

The phone is now the default camera.