I don’t think that Canon and similar could offer anything to compete with smart phones. While smart phone cameras have gotten much better, the real secret sauce is that everyone already has a smart phone. It’s not that smart phones beat DSLRs, its that they got sufficiently good and everyone got them for other reasons. Not having to buy and carry a second device is quite the market advantage, it turns out.

Frankly, no dedicated camera is ever going to win back users with software features, and it is extremely unlikely that Canon or Nikon could out compete Apple and Google in this area. It makes much more sense for Canon to continue to serve hobbyists and pros with features that phones cannot offer, rather than trying to complete on software.