92.5% of photographs today are shot with smartphones

According to research by Max Spielmann, the UK’s leading high-street photo printing chain, 92.5% of the countless millions of photographs shot today will be on smartphones. As a species, we are now creating images at a faster rate than ever before. The shift in camera type use has largely come about because of social media.

As a leading high-street brand, Max Spielmann often conducts research in the photography world to better target its potential customers. Their latest study takes aim at social media and the effect it’s had on the wider photography industry. It brings up some very interesting information and insights. some of which might surprise you. Some, on the other hand, may just confirm a slightly depressing reality.

They say that by the end of the year, 1.8 trillion photos will be shot worldwide in 2023. To bring this into understandable figures, that’s around 57,246 photos shot every second of every day. 92.5% of those will be shot using the camera contained within a smartphone and a mere 7% using “real cameras” like DSLRs and mirrorless cameras. The lion’s share of these images ends up on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and WhatsApp.

Instagram sees 1.3 billion images shared every single day, and this is the smallest of the four platforms mentioned. There are over 15,000 images posted to Instagram posts, stories and DMs every single second. And while it’s not all selfies, selfies seem to be becoming more accepted among the masses. 63% of people aged 35 to 54 have shot a selfie, with even the over-55 crowd clocking in at 44%.

The birth of social media platforms like Instagram, designed (at least, initially) to share photos, spawned a whole new class of software. This is software that allows you to add filters and presets to your images to change their appearance very quickly and easily. More advanced applications such as Lightroom, Snapseed and others. also allow you to manually tweak specific image settings for finer control.

One thing I found particularly interesting in the data is that the sale of disposable cameras is on the increase. According to their research, Fujifilm has seen sales of disposable cameras almost double to 7.5 million since 2014-15. They also note that there are a number of apps out there designed to simulate the look and feel of film, particularly disposable cameras. We even featured a digital take on the disposable film camera recently here on DIYP.

Also of interest, and perhaps something that gives us a little hope. There are still many people searching for printing services in order to hang their photos on the wall. The numbers aren’t quite as high as those in the film and print business would like, but they certainly seem to show that there’s still a pretty significant interest.

The sheer number of photographs created each day in 2023 is mind-boggling. And it’s only set to increase in the future. And regardless of whether we love them or hate them, smartphones are not only here to stay, but they’re actually leading the way in terms of how many images they shoot. The onslaught of smartphones with ever-improving cameras over the last fifteen years has had a massive effect on photography. And social media has had a massive effect on those smartphone cameras.

I almost want to see similar stats from 25 years ago showing point & shoot usage vs 35mm SLRs. The overall number of images taken would be much lower, of course, but I’d be keen to see if the point & shoot gets anywhere near the 92.5% image creation share that smartphones currently possess.