Mort Walker wrote:
The best camera is the one you have with you, and if that happens to be a smart phone, so be it and I'm in that situation often, but the smart phone is not going to replace a good mirror-less compact camera. As the author says, since most people view photos on devices and not in print, you can get away with 1024x1024, but if you can carry better, why not?
That is an example of asking the wrong question and would be considered a red flag if included in a user study. It assumes that the user is a hobbyist/enthusiast who is willing to bear some inconvenience for some additional quality. This in turn assumes the user can perceive the quality delta. That already reveals the question maker's inherent bias.
The questions most consumers will ask in this context is do I see a perceptible difference in quality? If yes, do I care? Do I care so much that I will buy and carry an extra device?
Mort Walker wrote:
The P&S, as said before, more correctly a compact mirror-less camera, is where the interest is in.
Looks like you are trying to change the definition of what a is P&S camera into a narrow one.

Are all P&S cameras considered compact mirror-less cameras? Is this something to be marketed as a compact mirror-less camera? I don't think so.
Mort Walker wrote:Not for you or the 90% of smart phone users, but for the 10% of the 7 billion on this planet.
Except its not 10% of the 7 billion - its much much less and its not 90% of smartphone users but 90% of the combined target market for phones and cameras. And those of the 7 billion who don't use a camera yet are not buying standalone cameras any more - this is the crowd which would typically buy a P&S camera. Remember the Hotshot camera that started the P&S craze in India? Now conversion rate from standalone P&S to smartphone-only camera usage is increasing YoY at a rate which will pretty soon turn camera-only manufacturers into an exclusively niche industry just like the PND industry. They keep their high margins as before but volumes drop.
Mortu-tau, it doesn't matter to me if people used P&S cameras or their smartphones or if the camera is at fault or the user behind it. Rather the fact that they are not using the former too much and majorly shifting to the latter is what interests me becoz it signals trends worth paying attention to. Why do you think Instagram became such a success - they exploited this very trend. One can have infinite chai-biskoot discussions of purity of standalone cameras, lack of skill on part of mango abduls, lack of taste for good pictures and all that - none of it matters in the real world, its all for academic magaz-maari.