As of yesterday, there were an estimated 6.88 billion people on the planet. Here are some other estimates to compare that with:
- 1.7 billion imaging sensors sold this year (~one for every four people)
- 250 million smartphones with 5mp+ sensors sold next year (~one for every 30 people)
- 100 million compact cameras sold this year (~one for every 70 people)
- 12 million DSLRs sold this year (~one for every 575 people)
Put another way, in my little town of 11,313 people, there should be at least 2800+ imaging devices deployed this year, 377 new smartphones sold, 161 new compact cameras acquired, and 20 new DSLRs bought. There are about two orders of magnitude more people in what we call Lehigh Valley than there are in my town, so that implies ~2000 DSLRs sold by one Best Buy store, one big local camera store, and all other sources (various local stores, mail order, etc.).
Lying with Statistics Note: the numbers in the previous paragraph should be obviously higher, as the approximately 1 billion people in Africa aren't consuming high-end goods at the speed we are in the US. For instance, DSLR sales for Africa might make not even make it to 2% of the worldwide sales, but there's 15% of the world population there. I'll leave it to you to fine tune the numbers as you see fit. The point remains pretty much the same.