"take on rivals"
What rivals? Getty Stock? Nat Geo? The market for photography is already so diluted that, to remain relevant, the best living photographers in the world have to resort to teaching workshops, creating DVD's, "doing" Hangouts, Facebook posts, etc at a frenetic pace just to try to stay in the game.
On one hand, I'm glad that photography has come to the masses (reminds me of Brownie Hawkeye's and Polaroids) and access to professional training is readily available for a reasonable price. I'll qualify "reasonable" this way- If the new photographer can afford a pro body and lens, whatever that means (a pro can create a great image with a holga... so "pro body" to me, is an oxymoron), then they can afford proper training to use it. Unfortunately creativity is not something that can be learned and that is painfully clear from the array of "crap" that is splayed out on the social media and photo storage sites.
On the other hand I see the quality of imagery, at the commercial level, declining, in some cases, rapidly. It seems that "good enough" has replaced "best possible".
