A new study from the NPD Group finds that more and more people are using smartphones in lieu of low-end digital cameras and camcorders to take photos and shoot video.

Smartphones helped earlier this year and a new study from the NPD Group suggests they may someday take out low-end point-and-shoot cameras as well. That's because more and more people are snapping pictures with handsets like Apple's iPhone in lieu of using digital cameras, according to the market research firm's latest "Imaging Confluence Study."

The NPD study, published this week, found that the percentage of photos taken with a smartphone grew to 27 percent in 2011 from 17 percent the year before, even as photos taken on all single-purpose cameras fell from 52 percent in 2010 to 44 percent this year.

While smartphones are increasingly the favored tool for taking pictures and videos on the fly, the research firm said, single-purpose cameras and camcorders remain popular with consumers for more structured filming activities (see chart below).

"There is no doubt that the smartphone is becoming 'good enough' much of the time, but thanks to mobile phones, more pictures are being taken than ever before," said Liz Cutting, executive director and senior imaging analyst at NPD, in a statement. "Consumers who use their mobile phones to take pictures and video were more likely to do so instead of [using] their camera when capturing spontaneous moments, but for important events, single-purpose cameras or camcorders are still largely the device of choice."

The rise of smartphones as go-to filming devices is apparent in the survey of U.S. consumers that NPD used as the basis for its study, but also in actual numbers being tracked in the retail market. The research firm said its Retail Tracking Service found that in the first 11 months of 2011, the point-and-shoot camera market had dipped 17 percent year-over-year in terms of units shipped and 18 percent in terms of revenue.

That squeeze also applied to video recording devicesNPD said pocket camcorder and traditional flash camcorder unit shipments are down 13 percent and 8 percent respectively this year, while sales for those product categories are down 27 percent and 10 percent.

More expensive cameras appear to be bucking this trend, however. The research firm noted that unit shipments and revenue for detachable lens cameras have each grown by better than 10 percent year-over-year, with such cameras boasting an average price tag of $863. Meanwhile, higher-end point-and-shoots, defined as having optical zooms of 10x or greater, had grown by 16 percent in terms of units shipped and by 10 percent in terms of revenue through November. Such products carried an average price of $257, NPD said.