In a make-or-break year for the camera market, Jon Devo suggests throwing out the playbook

“An image captured with the Lumix S9. Once I realised the benefit of having such a portable full-frame camera, it was my unexpected camera of the year.”

Jon Devo

The camera market is due another shake-up and 2025 could be the year that makes or breaks it. So what factors could make this a pivotal year for the industry?

We’ve seen a resurgence in demand for new compact-style cameras, with Fujifilm’s X100VI and X-M5 [see review on page 108], Sony’s ZV E10-II and the Panasonic Lumix S9 capturing the attention of the camera-buying masses. We also saw some incredible mobile devices with superb imaging functionality, such as the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, Oppo Find X8 Pro, OnePlus 13 and the Vivo X200 Pro. The most interesting thing about three out of four of those phones is they were all marketed with legacy camera brand names as an integral component of the devices. The Oppo and OnePlus flagships both benefit from a co-developed Hasselblad camera system, while on Vivo’s website, the X200 is listed as “Vivo X200-series co-engineered with Zeiss”. They don’t once refer to it as a mobile phone, instead, it’s a “masterpiece in imaging”.