The top camera makers, Nikon and Canon, were top camera makers before digital. Smartphones killed the compact cameras market that had the most companies and the survivors are the ones that had successful interchangable lens systems or were able to pivot to mirrorless.

Sony is the other currently successful camera maker. They bought Konica-Minolta, and made the switch to mirrorless early. Most importantly, they manufacture the best sensors that everyone else except for Canon uses.

Most of the current digital camera brands were analog camera makers. Panasonic is the exception and they partnered with Leica.

This seems like an argument, but we're in agreement.

Also Fujifilm in mirrorless but they're probably a smaller player than Sony.

We'll see what happens in the long run. With advances in smartphones and computational photography, interchangeable lens cameras increasingly look like a niche. And the big camera makers have been really slow to do anything other than incrementally tweak their bodies.

Clearly, they'll still be the go tos for pros and advanced amateurs for a long time but that's barely a mass market.

Sony did successfully use digital to become a respected camera maker--and they still have some of the best cameras in their category today. But, by and large, the traditional consumer electronics companies focused on point and shoots, which have been almost totally erased by phones.

You're not wrong. The upstarts may not have weathered the first rounds of the battle but I know people are pretty annoyed at the lock-in.

There was supposed to be a format standard for lenses to solve this problem, but one of my camera-snob friends pointed out that while you can physically thread the lens on another body, things like autofocus probably won't work. So in the end it got people to buy new lenses but still not be able to pick best of breed from each generation.