People will take 1.2 trillion digital photos this year - thanks to smartphones

Thanks to smartphones, millions of people around the globe are turning into prolific photographers. According to estimates from InfoTrends, people will take a hundred billion more photos in 2017 than they did in 2016. As highlighted by this chart from Statista - which is based on the InfoTrends' data - the vast majority of those photos will be taken on smartphones.

Sales of digital cameras have drastically declined over the years, dropping from 121.5 million in 2010 to an estimated 13 million in the first half of 2016, according to the Camera and Imaging Products Association. The sophistication of smartphone cameras allows everyday users to take high-quality pictures easily, and for most consumers, it makes no sense to spend extra money on a separate device just to take photographs.

The popularity of social-media sites including Facebook and Instagram has likely played another key role in the rise of smartphone cameras, since it's generally much easier to upload photos from a smartphone than from stand-alone cameras.