Hi Edmund,
It seems to me that camera sensor seem to be pretty stuck at 24MP for APS-C, 24x36 mm at 42-50MP. MF does significant progress with 100MP 44x33 and 150 54x40 on Sony's published roadmap, those MF sensors would correspond to 60MP on 24x36.
It is nice to see development on cell phones. Let us not forget that most images are actually shot on cell phones and all smart things they are putting in those cell phones actually improve all those Tera pictures (to avoid conflict between US and European numbers).
Although extreme resolution is sometimes needed, like in reproduction of artwork or arial photography, the main reason to use "real cameras" are lenses.
On the other hand, compact cameras are nearly a dead end, although high end compacts seem to sell reasonably well, I guess.
An other way to see it is that a "camera is simply an imaging device". Nothing says that you cannot attach a long lens to a cell phone.
I guess that we will see a lot of change in the camera industry with the arrival of 8K. Camera electronics that can deliver 8K at 50p will need very advanced electronics and that will be able to handle also stills.
One interesting thing is that multi frame technologies probably will play a larger role in the future. 8K needs like 39MP on 3:2 formats. You shoot at 50 frames/s, that is a lot of data, to used with supersampling.
It obviously doesn't work with studio flash, but I guess that continuous light will see more and more use because of video.
I have read that Forza Semiconductor has developed a 133 MP sensor for NHK. It will be used for broadcasting. It seems that it has 43 mm diagonal but will obviously use 16/9 format rather than 24x36. It samples an RGBG quartet for each 8K pixel. DR will of course be a bit limited compared with larger pixels.
That sensor would have around 2.5 micron pixels, pretty ideal for today's best lenses.
Best regards
Erik
It looks like those millions of dollars of R&D invested by phone makers are starting to pay off ...
https://www.dpreview.com/news/2999078463/noa-n7-smartphone-captures-80mp-images-with-high-resolution-mode
Edmund