Film vs Digital
For many years the quality of digital images lagged behind film (in the hands of a skilled individual). Some will argue that digital still lags behind film, especially when comparing digital to medium or large format film. I will go as far as to say that even if the resolution of each is the same, the result of film is superior.
A couple of things happened in the early 2000s that made digital a serious contender to the dominance of film. First, digital sensors became cheap enough and good enough to compete with film on smaller prints. The results still looked worse, but the results were fast. Price-wise, it was still possible to shoot a lot of film for the price of a digital camera (tmax was $0.80/roll if you bought it in bulk in 2005 if I remember right). Second and most importantly social media became ubiquitous. A growing social media trend was to take a picture of yourself doing whatever it was that you were doing and post a picture soon afterwards (these days we do it right then and there thanks to smart phones). The speed at which you could post was much more important than the quality of the results. If it weren't for the popularity of social media I don't think it would have mattered nearly as much because you still would have shared your photos the old fashioned way by subjecting your friends and family to a tedious viewing of your latest vacation photos when they came to visit.
These days, sales of digital cameras has actually been falling (thanks again to the smart phone). It turns out it's the ability to share quickly regardless of quality that really matters to consumers in our current social media climate. My theory is that if social media as we know it today never became popular, film would command a larger share of the market. Film prices were competitive with digital even after digital SLRs were available at the $1000 price point. Digital lucked out for a short period of time thanks to it's speed advantage over film but was ultimately supplanted by something even faster (smart phones), quality be dammed.
Of course, I'm biased. I've always loved film. Digital had the greatest appeal to me when I had no extra money and film prices had already begun to rise in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Even today with high film prices I will from time to time wonder if it finally no longer makes financial sense to shoot film only to determine that I can shoot film for a couple of years at my pace for the price of a new digital camera. Long enough for the camera to become "obsolete". Meanwhile, my film cameras as old as my parents keep on producing wonderful images. Anyway, that's my theory on why digital was never really superior to film but won due to fortuitous circumstances (and ultimately lost).