Beating GoPro at Its Own Game

The action-camera category was invented and defined by an American company, GoPro. It is now largely owned by two Chinese ones. The clearest of them is Insta360, the Shenzhen firm, formally Arashi Vision, founded in 2015, which turned the awkward idea of a 360-degree camera into a mainstream product and rode it to the top of the market.

The numbers are emphatic. Insta360 holds around 71% of the 360-degree camera market by revenue, and together with DJI accounts for about 87% of all handheld cameras shipped; GoPro, the pioneer, has slipped below 6%.^[2][3] Insta360’s own shipments grew about 66% in a single quarter, the fastest in the field.^[3] This was not won on price: revenue climbed from about 2 billion yuan in 2022 to 5.6 billion in 2024, a 65% annual growth rate, with roughly 80% of sales overseas.^[1]

GoPro made the action camera famous. A Shenzhen startup made it 360 degrees, took the market, and listed at ten billion dollars while the pioneer faded.

The market’s verdict

Public investors ratified the story. When Insta360 listed on Shanghai’s STAR Market in June 2025, the shares opened about 285% above their offer price, valuing the company at more than 70 billion yuan, nearly $10 billion.^[1] It is now profitable and growing, and its success has drawn DJI directly onto its turf with a new 8K panoramic camera.^[3]

One honest caveat: the 87% and 71% share figures are single-quarter data and should be labelled as such; a quarter can flatter a full-year picture. The revenue trajectory, from the IPO prospectus, is firmer.

The investment case

Insta360 is the cleanest rebuttal to the idea that Chinese hardware competes only on cost. It won a category against its Western creator by out-innovating it, better stabilisation, better software, a genuinely new form factor, and it did so as an export-led, premium-priced, publicly-scrutinised company. For investors that is the more valuable kind of Chinese hardware story: not a cheap substitute, but a design-and-innovation leader building a global brand. We read Insta360, alongside DJI, as proof that the frontier of consumer imaging has moved to Shenzhen, and as a template for how the next Chinese hardware champions will take categories — by making a better product, not just a cheaper one.