DJI and Insta360 Now Ship More Than Twice as Many Cameras as the Mirrorless Industry – What the Numbers Can (and Can’t) Tell Us

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by Nino LeitnerToday

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DJI and Insta360 now account for more than nine out of ten handheld cameras shipped worldwide, and together they ship more than twice as many cameras as the entire mirrorless industry. At the same time, the traditional camera makers are selling fewer bodies at higher prices. That’s a real shift in the camera market, but for anyone working in professional video, the data has a big blind spot, and I think it’s important to be clear about where it is.

The trigger is the latest quarterly report from market research firm IDC on what it calls handheld smart cameras, published on September 23. At CineD, we’ve tested the products behind these numbers in our lab, from the DJI Osmo Pocket 4P to the Insta360 Luna Ultra, and we’ve followed the DJI Osmo Nano and GoPro’s very difficult year, from its going-concern warning to Nick Woodman’s letter promising the cameras are staying. In August, we also looked at the first-half numbers from CIPA, the Japanese camera industry association. This is the first time I’ve put the two side by side.

A two-company market

First, what IDC is actually counting. Its handheld smart camera category covers three kinds of product: action cameras (including clip-on, detachable ones like the Osmo Nano), 360 cameras, and gimbal cameras like the Osmo Pocket. Phones aren’t included, and neither is anything with interchangeable lenses.

In the second quarter of 2026, that market grew by more than half compared to a year earlier, to almost 5.9 million cameras. DJI shipped about three out of every four of them and Insta360 one in five. That leaves everyone else, GoPro included, with less than a tenth of the market. Gimbal cameras are now the biggest segment, ahead of classic action cameras, which tells you how much the Osmo Pocket format has taken off.

GoPro is the clearest casualty. IDC estimates that its action camera shipments roughly halved year over year. GoPro’s own second-quarter report points the same way, with camera sales to customers down 38% and revenue down 31%.

How that compares with mirrorless

This is where it gets striking. For the full year 2025, IDC reports that DJI shipped more than 10 million handheld cameras, a first for the company. CIPA’s figures for all of its member companies combined, every mirrorless camera, DSLR and compact, add up to about 9.4 million. In other words, DJI alone shipped more cameras last year than every CIPA member together. Mirrorless cameras accounted for about 6.3 million of that CIPA total, so DJI and Insta360 together shipped more than twice as many cameras as the whole mirrorless market.

The gap is widening this year. Comparing the first half of 2026 with the first half of 2025, handheld smart cameras grew by close to 50%, while CIPA’s interchangeable-lens cameras slipped by about 5%. Mirrorless alone was roughly stable in units, down around 2%.

Two markets moving in opposite directions

The unit numbers make the headline, but prices tell the more interesting story. In the handheld category, volumes are rising while prices fall. IDC’s figures show average prices for gimbal and action cameras dropping year over year in both the first and second quarter.

That pressure is visible in Insta360’s results, and since Insta360 is listed in Shanghai, we can read them directly. Its half-year report shows revenue up by about half, while profit almost disappeared, down 94%. Insta360 itself gives four reasons: memory chip prices that stayed high, stockpiling chips to secure supply, heavy investment in its new 360 drone, and tougher competition. So the price war is part of the story, but by the company’s own account, not all of it. DJI is privately held and doesn’t publish comparable figures.

Mirrorless is doing the opposite. According to CIPA, mirrorless makers are shipping slightly fewer bodies than a year ago, but the total value of those shipments is going up. Fewer cameras, more money per camera. Interestingly, compact cameras are growing too, by around 16% in the first half.

My reading of this, and it is an interpretation, is that the camera market is splitting into two businesses. One is a high-volume consumer category where Chinese companies compete on features and price, and where, I suspect, the product more often competes with a phone than with a mirrorless camera. The other is a smaller, premium interchangeable-lens business where the traditional makers are prioritizing margin over volume. The compact boom inside CIPA’s own numbers suggests that demand for small, dedicated cameras is broad, and not something DJI and Insta360 are simply taking away from mirrorless.

What the numbers can’t tell us

Here’s where I have to be honest about the limits, because they matter a lot for our audience and us, as filmmakers, as well.

First, there’s no data on the professional video and cinema market. Blackmagic Design is privately held and doesn’t publish unit numbers. Neither does ARRI, and RED’s sales aren’t broken out anywhere I could find since Nikon acquired it. Kinefinity, Z CAM and other smaller cinema camera makers don’t report either. Canon’s Cinema EOS and Sony’s cinema line don’t appear as separate figures in CIPA’s published data, and CIPA doesn’t say publicly whether dedicated video bodies are included in its totals at all. So neither dataset can tell us whether the cinema camera market is growing or shrinking, or who’s winning it. If you were hoping this piece would show where your next A-camera comes from, the data simply isn’t there.

Second, the two datasets are built differently. CIPA’s numbers are reported by its member companies. IDC’s are an analyst’s estimates, which for a private company like DJI can’t be checked against anything official. Both count cameras shipped into the market rather than bought by end users, and they largely cover different manufacturers. So this is a comparison of two partial pictures, not one tidy market share table.

Third, a camera isn’t a camera. A gimbal camera that costs a few hundred dollars and a mirrorless body are very different purchases, so comparing units makes the handheld category look bigger in business terms than it is. And fourth, the biggest camera category of all is missing from both: the smartphone.

So is there enough here to support the story? For consumer cameras, I think yes. Two independent sources over several quarters point the same way, and GoPro’s own numbers line up with IDC’s picture. For professional video, no.

Where this could be heading

What comes next is partly speculation, so I’ll label it that way. Prices in the handheld category have fallen for two quarters in a row while volumes keep climbing, and Insta360 itself lists tougher competition among the reasons its profit dropped. More competition may be coming. Chinese business media have reported that phone makers Oppo and Vivo are working on gimbal cameras of their own, with Oppo reportedly aiming for a launch before the end of this year. That information comes from third-party reporting, not from the companies, so treat it as unconfirmed. But if phone makers with their own supply chains and retail networks do enter this category, I don’t see the price pressure easing anytime soon.

For us, the more relevant trend is quality. Pocket gimbal cameras now come with 1-inch sensors and 10-bit log recording, we test them in the same lab as cinema cameras, and the results have surprised us more than once (our Focus Check episode 127 is a good example). My feeling is that the sheer volume in this category funds the development that keeps pushing these cameras further into B-camera territory on professional sets, and for many creators, they are definitely also replacing mirrorless cameras (and smartphones). That’s my guess, not something the data shows. (Blackmagic, if you ever want to publish unit numbers, we’d happily write that article too.)

Do you already use an Osmo Pocket or an Insta360 as a B-camera on paid work? And do you see these devices competing with your mirrorless or cinema camera, or doing a different job altogether? Let me know in the comments below!