Earlier this month, a client asked me for my thoughts on fancy equipment, as she was getting a property listing filmed and I joked if I wasn’t killing my own trade by saying that smartphones these days are good enough. (Because without the expensive equipment, how are filmmakers going to up-sell their services?)

Of course, fancy equipment have their own merits and stage. But for many smaller productions, the gear will become less important in the future and that also means less business for the traditional camera industry. You might have seen MVs and short films shot purely on iPhone without realising it, especially if you watch videos on your portable devices. That’s the kind of quality we’re talking about. And that’s exactly also how people are consuming content.

And so, unsurprisingly, Olympus has decided to sell its camera division to focus on medical equipment. We all knew the micro four thirds system would die off. It was just a matter of when. Smartphone cameras have become the selling point of all smartphones because there is a market for it. Why would you spend a thousand dollars on a micro four thirds system, when you could have something more portable and equally capable of producing amazing images and videos that capture attention?

The Huawei and Leica partnership has given us an inkling on what the future will be like. Smartphone makers would partner with companies in the camera industry looking to branch out into the mobile space. It’s a win-win for everyone, including the consumers.