Something interesting is happening in photography. Data shows consumers are increasingly buying premium camera phones. Yet, at almost the opposite end of the market, inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras are also enjoying an unexpected resurgence.
On one side, we have flagship smartphones now costing well upwards of $1,000, while on the other, we have cameras like the Kodak Pixpro FZ55, a $140 compact camera that has become one of the year’s best-selling cameras despite offering photographic capabilities that, to put it politely, are considerably more modest even than those of the most basic camera phone.
Both slip in pocket and are perfect for capturing everyday situations, but why are consumers willing to spend more on the best camera phones, yet also embracing dedicated cameras that are photographically far less impressive?
Premium smartphones are taking over the market
The growth of premium smartphones has been an ongoing trend over the past few years. According to Counterpoint Research, more premium smartphones accounted for a record 29% of global smartphone sales by volume in the first half of 2026, up from 25% during the same period in 2025 and just 20% in 2022.
Apple and Samsung still dominate this market, accounting for a combined 84% of premium smartphone sales, but Chinese manufacturers are making significant progress. Oppo recorded the fastest growth in the premium segment during the first half of 2026, with sales increasing by 69%, while Vivo saw growth of 20%.
Those figures are particularly interesting in light of a recent briefing I received from Oppo, in which the company outlined its plans to concentrate more on premium smartphones than low-margin devices. The company is now targeting a doubling of Find X series sales in Europe in 2027 (and the incredible Oppo Find X10 Pro Max definitely has the potential to make that a reality).
And what does Oppo see as one of the most important ways to convince consumers to spend more? Cameras.
The company identifies imaging as one of its three main areas of premium differentiation, alongside AI and well-being. Oppo's strategy places considerable emphasis on photography, with its flagship Find X devices featuring its close partnership with legendary camera manufacturer Hasselblad.
Of course, better cameras are not the only reason premium smartphones are growing. Rising memory costs, which have pushed phone prices higher, and trade-in programs and financing options have also made expensive devices easier to afford.
Nevertheless, it's clear that photography is one of, if not the most important way of differentiating the most expensive phones, and that consumers are increasingly choosing the premium devices on which those camera technologies are found.
This makes what's happening in the dedicated camera market all the more intriguing.
Cheap point-and-shoot cameras are enjoying their own boom
While the smartphone market is moving increasingly toward premium products, recent camera sales figures tell a different story. In Japan, Kodak has been outselling some of the biggest names in the camera industry with dirt-cheap compact cameras with specs that would be laughable in a modern flagship phone.
According to Japanese retail analyst BCN+R, Kodak became the country's best-selling digital camera brand by unit sales in April 2024, taking a remarkable 22.5% share of the entire market.
And this wasn't simply a one-off. Kodak-branded cameras returned to the top of Japan's overall digital camera sales rankings in May 2026 and in June 2026, finishing approximately one percentage point ahead of behemoth Canon in sales volume.
There are some important caveats. These figures represent sales through participating Japanese retailers, and selling a large number of inexpensive compacts is also considerably different from selling high-end mirrorless cameras costing thousands of dollars with bigger margins. Sony has certainly shifted a lot of its A7 V this year, so we don't need to panic about the mirrorless market.
Nevertheless, it's quite extraordinary that not only can a brand predominantly selling cheap and cheerful point-and-shoot cameras compete with, and sometimes outsell, manufacturers such as Canon, Sony, and Fujifilm across the entire digital camera market – but also that the market en masse seems to have embraced cameras that offer objectively worse image quality.
Why do we want better smartphone cameras but worse dedicated cameras?
For years, camera manufacturers have worked to eliminate noise, improve dynamic range, correct exposures, and produce sharper, cleaner photographs. Smartphones have arguably taken this pursuit of technical perfection further than anyone else, using computational photography and AI to produce the best possible image with minimal user effort.
However, the aesthetic associated with inexpensive digital compact cameras is almost the opposite. Hard flash, higher contrast, less impressive dynamic range, and the noisy, blocky appearance of early digital photography have become desirable characteristics in their own right. It's an aesthetic that has become popular across Instagram and TikTok.
It's easy to suggest (and many have) that the rise of cheap compacts is simply a backlash to the perfection of smartphone photography, and that there is somehow an "authenticity" to lo-fi photos. Or that a compact camera is just more fun to shoot with than the device where you also get your email. But then it is an interesting contradiction that both are doing so well.
Sales figures alone don't tell us whether the same people are buying both premium smartphones and cheap compacts. But we seem increasingly willing to pay for technology that takes the guesswork out of getting a great photo, while also embracing cameras that put some of that unpredictability back in. Perhaps the definition of a good camera isn't quite as straightforward as we might believe.
