Having worked in the digital imaging industry for close to 30 years before I left and went into a different career; perhaps I can offer my perspective on this subject.
The reality is that, mirrorless won't replace mirror based DSLR anytime soon and I foresee that both of these systems will be on the decline as phone cameras keep getting better and the optical zooms become standard features.
Mirrorless were meant to address a baby boomer generation who are retiring or had retired and wanting to travel and mirrorless addressed the travel restriction on carry-on luggage where it is now getting worse. This has been the trend in downsizing camera size and weight about a few years ago. starting with Olympus m43 when the sales started to decline in 2012. But even right now, sales are declining even with mirrorless and the fact that Nikon is closing its third party repair shop support and bringing all repairs in-house meant that they are just not selling enough to even keep their in-house techs busy working on repairs. This basically signal that sales had declined to a point that many camera makers are now playing defensive and to keep costs contained in a declining camera market.
Another issue that had crept up for a few years now is overstocking and over-inventory. Your camera gear loses value as soon as you took it out of a shop period, unless you own a Leica or a Hasselblad body where they would maintain their value somewhat. Overstocking and over-inventory had been a systemic issue when I was working in the industry. In order to maintain cost production and maintain profit margins, they would commit to a certain number of sensors and components and they would instruct their sales force to pressure dealers to commit to a certain number of sales on a yearly basis. That means, if you want to continue being an authorized dealer for those camera brands, a dealer need to commit to stocking certain products in their warehouse and while this is not a problem with B&H Photo and Amazon due to their large online presence, it poses a problem for many other dealers who don't have those larger presence. This had made dealers carry products that are several years old, kept prices artificially higher than need be and then eventually ending up slashing the prices to half its residual cost to move. Take the M100, the M5 and M6 from Canon. They had kept their prices too high for too long and now they had to clear them. So if someone had bought a M100 last year, this year that camera would be about half and you just lost half of its value for no fault of your own, but rather it was the camera cartel who kept those prices artificially high. This exacerbates the camera sales decline further, because people now know how to wait. Just wait a little longer and prices will start falling.
Unfortunately, this leads to the used market prices being also depressed as well. People nowadays will low-ball prices because they know new prices have fallen by so much. This then puts pressure on people who, by no fault on their own, to sell their gear at much lower cost. This has led many of them to simply say, this will be my last camera. I'll just use it until it dies.
I shoot with an Olympus m43 and a 1" Panasonic and bought into the system due to the size and weight as I use them to take travel photos. The savings I got by being able to carry them into the cabin allowed me to upgrade my seat, where it would otherwise end up paying for check-in luggage.
When I was working professional, I had used the Nikon D4s and D3 bodies with large lenses, but I was paid and the travel costs were compensated by the company I worked for. The problem now is that, it is only the upper middle class who can still afford to travel, pay the extra costs to carry those 50lbs gear alongside them. That upper middle class is on the decline and so eventually thought, who will be buying those expensive pro bodies when the upper middle class, which mainly consist of the baby boomer generation, disappear? Who will buy into the used D5 or D850? Unless you have a use for these bodies or even an A7 Mark III, those bodies will not be a good investment for a regular photographer who just uses it for regular photography, rather than using these bodies to make money.
When I was working pro, the freelancers (we call them shooting on SPEC) would get only 1-2 Euros per photo on international events. Most of them will NEVER make money to cover the cost of their travel and gear. Don't be so dumb and think camera gear is an investment, or else you will be a debt slave to Visa or MasterCard or a creditor, which unfortunately many professional photographers are such in that state.
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