If you have bought an action camera or a robot vacuum in Malaysia over the past two years, there is a good chance it was a Chinese brand, and an even better chance you did not think twice about it. The two American companies that invented those categories are now fighting to stay alive.
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The pioneers are running out of road
GoPro, the company that turned the action camera into a category after launching in 2002, has hired a financial adviser to weigh a sale or merger. It reported a net loss of about USD93.5 million for the year to December, its third annual loss in a row, on revenue of roughly USD652 million. That is down 19% from a year earlier and less than half of what the company sold at its 2015 peak, according to figures reported by Nikkei Asia. GoPro has also cut around a fifth of its staff and is chasing new business in defence and space.
The camera market is not shrinking. It is just being won by other people. Research firm IDC says Chinese drone maker DJI took 62% of the global handheld smart camera market in 2025, while Insta360 maker Arashi Vision held 20%. GoPro's shipments fell 26% in a year when the overall market grew 83% to 16.7 million units. DJI now borrows imaging know-how from Sweden's Hasselblad, Insta360 leans on Germany's Leica, and both push visible upgrades with almost every release.
Roomba's maker did not even get a clean exit
The robot vacuum tells the same story with a harsher ending. iRobot, the company that put the Roomba into millions of homes, filed for bankruptcy in December and agreed to be taken private by Picea Robotics, a Shenzhen-based supplier it had grown to depend on. Its revenue had slid from about USD890 million in 2023 to USD682 million in 2024 as cheaper, faster-moving rivals closed in.
Those rivals are almost all Chinese. Shipment trackers put Roborock at the top of the global robot vacuum market in 2025 at around 21.7%, with Ecovacs, Dreame, Xiaomi and Narwal filling out the rest of the top five. Together, five Chinese brands now hold close to 70% of a category an American firm created.
Malaysia already voted with its wallet
For Malaysian shoppers, none of this is abstract. Walk the action camera shelf at Harvey Norman, or scroll the bestseller lists on Shopee and Lazada, and the names that show up are DJI, Insta360 and Akaso, with GoPro hanging on as the legacy pick. DJI launched its Osmo 360 here in August 2025 from RM1,879, aimed straight at the Insta360 X5, and sells it directly through its own Lazada and Shopee stores.
It is the same at home. The robot vacuum aisle online is wall to wall Xiaomi, Roborock, Dreame and Ecovacs, often at prices that sit below what a Roomba used to cost. Malaysian buyers have quietly done what the global market did, picking the Chinese option because it does more for less.
What it means for what you buy next
There is an upside and a catch. The upside is the one Malaysians already enjoy: more features, faster updates and lower prices than the old Western incumbents offered. It is the same shift that already reshaped smartphones, where Chinese brands such as Xiaomi, vivo, OPPO and HONOR took four of Malaysia's top five spots in 2025 while the original category leaders faded.
The catch is what gets quieter when a category narrows to a handful of firms. After-sales support and warranty cover vary a lot between official stores and grey importers, so where you buy matters as much as what you buy. The biggest names also carry baggage: DJI sits under national-security scrutiny in the United States, a reminder that hardware choices increasingly come with data and policy questions attached. GoPro says it will try a comeback this year with larger sensors. In Malaysia, at least, the market has already moved on.
Images courtesy of Dose Media and Onur Binay on Unsplash.