The handheld camera business has become a contest between two Chinese brands, and the figures are lopsided. In the three months to June, DJI and Insta360 together accounted for 93 per cent of global handheld smart camera shipments, according to the research firm IDC. GoPro, long the name most associated with the action camera, is now one of the brands sharing the small remainder, and has agreed to merge with another company. Here is what that shift looks like from Malaysia, where all three brands are still on sale.
IDC's Worldwide Handheld Smart Camera Tracker for the second quarter of 2026, reported by TechNode and several other outlets, put DJI at 73 per cent of global shipments and Insta360 at 20 per cent, which leaves about 7 per cent for every other brand combined, GoPro among them. IDC's category spans more than the classic action camera: it also counts 360 cameras and gimbal cameras such as the DJI Osmo Pocket. These are shipment figures, meaning what manufacturers sent to retailers, which is not the same as what shoppers eventually bought, and IDC does not break the numbers out by country.
GoPro has not stood still. On 1 September it announced a definitive agreement to merge with Starman Optical, a deal still subject to approvals. It has also pushed its newest hardware upmarket, launching a MISSION 1 line of compact cinema cameras with their own mounts, microphones, grips and software, rather than another mass-market Hero. Its Hero 13 Black action camera remains on sale in Malaysia.
On the Malaysian shelf, a GoPro Hero 13 Black is about RM1,999, DJI's Osmo Action 6 about RM2,079, and Insta360's X5, a 360 camera rather than a conventional action camera, about RM2,499. These are indicative Malaysian retail prices at the time of writing, not a like for like comparison: the X5 films all the way around you while the other two point where you aim them, so read them as the cost of entering each brand's world.
What the shipment numbers do not explain is why two brands, rather than one, took almost all of this category. Our own reading, offered as interpretation rather than a measured cause, is that breadth helped: DJI and Insta360 each sell a wide catalogue of mounts, lenses, microphones, gimbals and editing software around their cameras, which may give a creator more reason to stay inside one family. GoPro's own MISSION 1 line comes with its own range of accessories too.
In Malaysia, DJI has courted creators directly this past month, running a 360 creator challenge with cash prizes and an Osmo giveaway. We put the compact Insta360 Go Ultra and DJI Osmo Nano side by side in this comparison.
For most people the sharper question is not DJI versus Insta360 at all, but whether any of them beats the phone already in your pocket. We tested exactly that.
For now the numbers describe the world, not the shop counter in Kuala Lumpur, since IDC measures what ships globally rather than what Malaysians buy. What is on the record is narrower and firm: in that quarter two Chinese brands shipped more than nine in ten handheld smart cameras, GoPro has signed itself into a merger, and all three are still on sale here.
Image courtesy of Noel Oviedo on Unsplash. Charts by ProductNation, data from IDC.
