Photography is going through a sea change in 2024, with the transition from digital cameras to smartphone photography continuing to gather pace. See the full story below.
Photography Statistics (2024) At a Glance
- Production of digital still cameras has collapsed from 121 million units in 2010, through 35 million units in 2015, to 8 million units in 20221, with an estimated 7 million units shipped in 2023.
- Over 9 million 35mm film cameras were produced in 1977, down to a low of 792,000 in 20072, and none today.
- Digital stills cameras buyers on average have a gender balance of 74% to 88% male3.
- 1.12 trillion photos were taken in 2020, 1.39 trillion photos in 2021, 1.50 trillion in 2022 and it’s estimated that there will be 1.72 trillion photos taken in 2023 and 1.96 trillion photos taken in 20264.
- Between 4.1 billion and 4.7 billion photos are taken every day, that’s 47,564 per second!
- On average, the number of photos taken per day per person are 0.37 in Europe, 0.26 in Africa, 0.47 in Latin America, 0.49 in Asia and the Pacific region, and 1.41 in the USA, with a global average of 0.58 photos taken per person, per day5.
- People take more photos of dogs than any other animal6.
- Approximately 4.5 trillion photos are stored on Google Photos, with 28 billion uploaded each week, but most are never viewed7.
- In 2023, only 5.6% of photos are taken with digital stills cameras, with the rest taken by smartphones. This compares with 50% of photos taken with digital cameras in 20178.
- Google searches for “Photography” have declined to 25% of their level in 2004, although many other photography terms like “iPhone camera” are currently at their highest search volumes9.
- Instagram users have shared over 40 billion images in the site’s lifetime, and social media users share at least 3.5 billion images every day.
Credit: Tim Daniels / lapseoftheshutter.com
How Many Pictures Are Taken a Year?
Approximately 1.72 trillion photos were taken in 2023 across the world, and up to 1.96 trillion photos in 2026.
The number of photos taken in a year is currently rising by 14.6% year-on-year, given the increasing use of smartphones for photography, and the increasing number of smartphone sales, particularly across the developing world, although there was a large decline the number of pictures taken in 2020 versus 2019, due to the pandemic.
The number of pictures taken each year breaks down as:
- 1.71 trillion pictures taken each year.
- 142.5 billion pictures taken each month.
- 32.9 billion photos taken each week.
- 4.70 billion photos taken every day.
- 195 million photos taken every hour.
- 3.26 million photos taken each minute.
- 54,373 photos taken every second.
What’s the Average Number of Photos Taken Per Day?
On average, 4.70 billion photos are taken per day, across the world.
This can only ever be an estimate as it’s impossible to count the exact number of selfies and pictures of dogs taken.
Photographers in the US take the highest number of photos per day, averaging 1.41 photos per person, while the lowest number of photos taken per person per day is in Africa, with 0.26 photos per person.
| Region | Average Number of Photos Taken Per Person Per day |
|---|---|
| Africa | 0.26 |
| Europe | 0.37 |
| Latin America | 0.47 |
| Asia-Pacific | 0.49 |
| Global Average | 0.515 |
| US | 1.41 |
This equates to 514 photos per year, per US citizen.
The average global citizen takes around 188 pictures, per year, or around 1 photo every 2 days.
Note that this includes everyone, man, woman or child, and with only around 5 billion of the 8 billion global population with Internet access, we can assume that the remaining 3 billion also lack the means to take any photos, which brings the average down.
If we ignore population figures, we can see the average number of photos taken per day across each region:
| Region | Average Number of Photos Taken Per Day Per Region (Billions) |
|---|---|
| Africa | 0.375 |
| Latin America | 0.393 |
| US | 0.576 |
| Europe | 0.922 |
| Asia-Pacific | 2.42 |
| Total | 4.69 |
Asia-Pacific citizens takes by far the highest number of photos per day, with 2.42 billion photos, although given the high population of the region, this only amounts to 0.49 photos per person, per day.
How Many Photos Are Taken Every Second?
There are 54,373 photos taken every second across the globe.
Around half of these photos are taken in Asia, which is not unexpected given that it’s home to more than half the global population.
How Many Pictures Are There in the World?
Today, there are around 9.94 trillion photos in the world, with the number increasing by nearly 2 trillion, or 12%, each year.
To put this into perspective, more photos are taken every two minutes than were taken in the entire 1800s, but that’s maybe not surprising when the first picture ever taken took eight hours to expose in 1827.
How Many Digitial Cameras Are Sold Each Year?
Sales of digital cameras have declined in recent years due to the introduction of smartphone photography.
Camera market share in 2023 was divided into 24.4% cameras with built-in lenses and 75.6% cameras with interchangeable lenses, according to CIPA data, with 8,012,000 cameras sold globally the previous year.
Mirrorless camera market share in 2023 was 58.7% of all cameras sold, or 77.6% of interchangeable cameras, with SLRs making up the remainder.
Film camera sales have not been recorded since 2008, as mainstream manufacturers stopped producing 35mm film camera models, but according to sales statistics, the most film cameras were sold in 1996, with 36,671,000 units sold.
Digital cameras became really popular in 2007, the first year that over 100,000,000 units were sold internationally, but digital cameras first outsold film cameras in 2002, with 24,551,000 digital cameras sold and only 23,660,000 film cameras shipped.
Digital cameras went out to outstrip the record 36 million film cameras sold, with a high of 121 million digital cameras sold in 2010, before a decline in sales corresponding with a rise in smartphone cameras.
How Many Photos Are Taken With Smartphones vs Digital Cameras?
Judging by Flickr uploads, only 50% of photos were taken by smartphones in 2017.
But by 2020, 90% of all photos were taken by smartphones, and by 2026, it’s predicted that smartphone users will take 93% of all photos.
| Year | Smartphone Share | Camera Share | Tablet Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 90.2% | 7.1% | 2.7% |
| 2022 | 91.3% | 6.1% | 2.4% |
| 2023 | 92.2% | 5.6% | 2.2% |
| 2024 | 93.0% | 5.0% | 2.0% |
| 2025 | 93.5% | 4.7% | 1.8% |
| 2026 | 94.1% | 4.3% | 1.6% |
How Many Pictures Does the Average Person Have On Their Phone?
In 2024, the average adult has around 3,000 photos on their phone, with single people, women and millenials having the most. iOS users take more photos than Android users, with Apple phone users having about 3,500 photos on their phones, compared with 2,100 photos for a typical Android user.
How Many Photos Are Shared On Social Media Daily?
Back in 2014, users were uploading 1.8 billion images per day across all social media channels (Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Whatsapp and Flickr).
In 2024, 3.2 billion images are uploaded daily across all social media platforms, with WhatsApp the leader.
How Many Photos Are Uploaded to Facebook Every Day?
There are now 825 million photos uploaded to Facebook every day in 2024, which is over 20% of the total number of photos uploaded to social media.
How Many Photos Are Uploaded to Instagram Each Day?
About 275 million photos are uploaded to Instagram every day in 2024, with high growth in the last couple of years due to people having to spend much more time at home.
References:
1 Camera and Imaging Products (CIPA) digital camera data.
2 Camera and Imaging Products (CIPA) film camera data.
3 Japanese sales data plus further research.
4 Rise above Research and personal research.
5 Original research based on number of photos taken per region, per year and population.
9 Personal research via Google Trends and keywording tools.
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