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The reason for a good camera is not to take artistic photography (although you can do that too and many do).

It's because people use that camera to record memories that they cherish. Just ask any new parent what happens to their phone's camera roll once number 1 pops out. Or ask young people to show you where they went on their last vacation: many times it'll be a bunch of cool shots taken on a phone.

These memories are priceless and having to record them with a device that is open but has the photo quality of a 5 year old device is not an attractive trade-off.

> I think relatively few consumers know anything about photography.

That's precisely why you need good image processing software that works automatically. Nearly everybody wants to take great photos with their phone, but few people know how to configure everything themselves, and even those who do probably don't want to fiddle with every shot.

> Couldn't they just find another niche?

Well, okay, what problem would you rather see them tackle?

> Of course, good camera software is a good thing and for the segment of society that's enthused about photography it's going to be essential. I'm just not convinced it's the secret sauce to mass appeal.

We already have the hard data: almost without exception, people who use phones want their phones to take nice pictures.

For reasoning about camera software, it is entirely reasonable to assume that “the segment of society that is enthused about photography” is basically the exact same segment as “people who have phones”.

If you don’t believe me, show me a popular smartphone that doesn’t have a camera. :)

I can show you a lot of people who rarely if ever use their smartphones to take pictures, and more still who primarily take pictures for utilitarian purposes (such as preserving the information on a whiteboard before erasing it, remembering where they parked their car, etc.) So I definitely don't agree that "owns a phone" and "enthused about photography" are basically the same groups of people. The former is much larger than the later.

> If you don’t believe me, show me a popular smartphone that doesn’t have a camera. :)

I can show you plenty that lack good cameras... I don't think that's a compelling argument anyway. iphones have barometers but that doesn't mean everybody who owns one cares about their altitude or predicting the weather.

> such as preserving the information on a whiteboard before erasing it, remembering where they parked their car, etc.) So I definitely don't agree that "owns a phone

You’re an engineer that doesn’t go on a lot of vacations then. My mom can see the difference between the photo quality of her iPhone 6 and my dad’s iPhone 11, and she’s everything but an expert.

I really don't know how you could come to this opinion. Instagram/Snapchat are literally entire social networks built around photos.

You don't need to be enthused about photography to care about preserving memories either.

From personal experience camera quality is far more important than any other spec (except maybe the display) for the vast majority of people.