Professional photographers require good reliable connectivity. Nikon cameras are extremely clunky in this regard.
Similarly, their menu system is atrocious. I am not saying this as somebody who looked at a camera once and said "this is too hard". I ran a photo business from 2008 to 2018, read all the manuals intimately and worked with Nikon cameras daily, and came to it from techie nerd perspective and knew what every button option and mode does in intricate detail.
"Great hardware, horrible software" is well understood state of camera business last 2 decades.
I now have two young kids. I have 4 dslr and two mirrorless cameras at home... And take kids photos with my cell - because it's convenient accessible and fast to transmit. Why can't I have an efficient sharing work flow with my $3000 camera? Because they make sucky closed systems and refuse to change open or learn.
I never worked with Sony or Canon, so I cannot say how that compares.
That is, at best, myopic.
Sports photographers need fast connectivity far more than studio photographers. Their whole business is to take, select, and send shots out as fast as possible.
News coverage needs fast connectivity.
Think even wedding photography - the ability to share photos to social networks right after ceremony, or display the couple shots during dinner is a professional USP. Instead, I'm juggling card reader, with my "two fast cards" and laptop and lightroom on my lap during speeches.
Just about every type of photography, professional or consumer, benefits from fast and easy connectivity.
>>And your comment is honestly the first time I hear anybody claim Nikons menu system is "bad"
Possible. we simply have different colleagues and frequent different forums then :).
Their menu system is powerful but poorly designed. Why are there two different types of setting banks? Why aren't there hardware buttons to select them? Why is some stuff unDer shooting but other under 6 layers of custom setting menu? Which is different than setup menu? Why is AF ON setup not under "controls"? And myriad other idiosyncracies.
Just because you're used to it (as am I!) does not make it good.
And again, for myself, I'm in a "shut up and take my money" for camera that would allow me to seemlessly capture and share photography. As you say, that's money in the table. And I'm not alone in my group of friends and colleagues.
This isn’t an insurmountable problem. Some Nikon camera bodies have Wi-Fi. If they cared to they could make it much much easier to get photos off and process them. It’s just not a focus of theirs.
I agree their hardware and optics are superb. I don't even begin to understand how their work flow or integration are anything but atrocious.
They could make their integration software better or let others do it - but they don't!
My conclusion is the exact opposite. Cellphone cameras are so incredibly slow (measuring time from moment of picking up phone to photo having being taken) that I can't imagine using it for any kid photos since the phtographable moment usually lasts a few seconds, they aren't posing.
I keep my older Nikon DSLR cameras around the house so one is usually within easy reach so I can snap a photo in less than a second when a cute kid moment is happening.
As to the Nikon menus, atrocious is not a word I could use. Sure it's always possible to nitpick something I'd do differently but they work just fine. More importantly, after initial setup it's not something I use much since everything is controlled by the physical buttons and that's the overwhelming win of a DSLR over a phone (and photo quality of course).
Either is adequate for casual photography.
We don't have any cute kids, but I hike and wildlife shows up now and then. I hike with a bridge camera, not because it's any faster or more convenient than my phone, but because of the lens. I have an older flagship phone, I would say the image quality is as good, but I have yet to get a wildlife shot with it due to the lack of zoom range.
My general experience is the harder the shot the more camera you need.
But that's not a realistic comparison since the phone is almost certainly not on the camera screen if I wasn't expecting to take a photo and the phone is just sitting there on the table (or worse, pocket).
My Nikon cameras are setup the way I like them, so everything I need is indeed reachable by physical buttons. This is good - as I said, their menu is powerful. But! When I get a new Nikon camera, despite 15 years of experience... it's a pain to set it up how I want it, and I still chase settings around the menus. So I deem them powerful, but poorly designed.
As to kids photos - it's all down to individual use cases, so lots of room for variation. For myself though, even though like yourself I literally have a DSLR ready to go on the shelf in the family room and on the TV stand in the living room... time to turn on cell and take a photo is far lower/faster then the time to grab the camera and shoot. Add to that, the time to then share that photo is literally 10 seconds via phone, vs realistically days to weeks via camera (by the time I bother taking the card out to the office, transferring photos, ingesting them, processing them, exporting, and then sharing). In majority of cases, DSLR would've taken a higher quality photos. In majority of cases, it doesn't matter.
And then there are all the other cases - playing in backyard, going for a walk, run, adventure, guests, whatever. Phone is there, good enough (hasn't always been the case! In the Note 8 / S8 time, only a few years ago, phones were not good enough, and phones weren't fast enough - now they are! I don't need to log in or face scan the phone, there's a shortcut and a snappy app and fast focus), and it shares so quickly! That sharing is really the winning factor and why I'm peeved expensive cameras don't make it easy to share.
But the big difference, for me, is, most of those pictures are quick pictures that I almost certainly never would have taken with my DSLR camera. I've got thousands of family pictures done on my phone that otherwise probably wouldn't have been taken at all.
When I'm going somewhere or doing something that I know I deliberately want to have pictures of? I still haul around the DSLR. When I want pictures I could only get with a super-telephoto or ultra-wide lens? I still haul around the DSLR.
I do feel that my iPhone has replaced any need for a cheap "compact camera", but I rarely used one after getting my (D)SLR cameras anyway. But I'm not sure that my iPhone has really taken away that much usage share from my DSLR. I just use it to take pictures that I wouldn't have gotten at all otherwise, which has turned out to be quite a few.
Sadly, it doesn’t seem like there are many cameras designed this way anymore.