Insta360 Launches Mirrorless Cameras, Breaking Into the Last Stronghold of Camera Manufacturers | Focus Analysis
Author | ZHANG Ziyi
Editor | YUAN Silai
It is no secret that Insta360 is set to develop mirrorless cameras.
Liu Jingkang, founder of Insta360, publicly confirmed the project in an interview with Japanese media: We are currently going all out to advance the R&D progress of our mirrorless camera.
People familiar with Insta360 told Hard Krypton that the company is currently developing two mirrorless cameras with interchangeable lenses. The two products have significant differences in appearance and user positioning, and one of them will adopt a brand-new form that has never been envisioned before.
Hard Krypton learned that what Insta360 intends to develop is not a mirrorless camera in the traditional sense, but a product that can reuse the AI and intelligent imaging capabilities accumulated in action cameras and panoramic cameras, making it easier for ordinary people to get started.
For Insta360, launching a mirrorless camera marks a new round of expansion.
China is the world's largest consumer market for mirrorless cameras. According to CIPA data, China accounted for approximately 29.2% of the global shipment of mirrorless cameras in 2024. The so-called mirrorless camera refers to a digital camera with interchangeable lenses that has no reflex mirror, and is smaller in size and more portable than a DSLR camera.
In the past, China's mirrorless camera market was long monopolized by Japanese manufacturers. Among domestic manufacturers, YI and Yongnuo have successively tried to launch mirrorless camera products. The former withdrew from the market after its first-generation product encountered problems with autofocus, while the latter focused its functions on the field of live streaming cameras.
Panoramic cameras used to be a sufficiently new market, and Insta360 quickly gained traction with the usage mode of "shoot first, frame later". In the action camera track, Insta360 found room for software innovation in image stabilization, intelligent follow shot and automatic editing.
However, mirrorless cameras have been developed for decades. The lenses, mounts, sensors, image stabilization, focusing, color rendering and even user operation habits have not only a set of mature rules, but also a complete product system built by powerful camera brands.
The mirrorless camera market also has great growth potential in the imaging industry. According to statistics from Mordor Intelligence, the global mirrorless camera market was valued at about 5.02 billion U.S. dollars in 2025, and will reach about 5.32 billion U.S. dollars in 2026.
The mirrorless camera market is a market that is regrowing, and it is also the most difficult peak to conquer in the consumer imaging sector.
Over the past few decades, the mirrorless camera market has been firmly occupied by Japanese manufacturers such as Canon, Sony, and Nikon, and almost no Chinese brand has been able to gain a foothold. Insta360 hopes to carve out its own niche through differentiation.
01 New Path in the Old Market
Inside Insta360, mirrorless cameras are defined as a "must-have option". Entering the traditional camera market is an unavoidable step for Insta360 to complete its full imaging product portfolio.
Behind the "completion of product line" is Insta360's belief that traditional mirrorless cameras are relatively weak in interactive design, user experience and AI capabilities, which also represent the core opportunity points.
"Mirrorless cameras have a very high upper limit, but a very low lower limit as well," a person close to Insta360 told Hard Krypton. People who know how to use cameras can create works far better than those shot with mobile phones, but for a large number of ordinary users without photography basics, mirrorless cameras are not necessarily easier to use than mobile phones. Complicated parameters, framing, focusing and post-processing procedures have kept many people who have higher requirements for image quality out of the door.
Hard Krypton learned that according to Insta360's current plan, AI will run through the entire process before, during and after the shooting with its mirrorless camera. On the shooting side, the system reduces the failure rate through functions such as automatic focus tracking and framing guidance; after shooting, functions such as image quality optimization, automatic editing and "AI Director" will further lower the threshold for producing high-quality footage.
This line of thinking is not unfamiliar. In the past, panoramic cameras allowed users to complete framing without doing so before pressing the shutter; action cameras reduced the requirements for handheld shooting through FlowState image stabilization; continuously iterated software in the post-processing stage further realized automatic camera movement and editing.
What Insta360 is good at is not making users become more professional photographers, but tapping into hidden demands and lowering the shooting threshold.
The research report of Guojin Securities also believes that different from most consumer electronics enterprises that drive product replacement through parameter iteration, Insta360's product methodology does not focus on competing for better parameters, but finds hidden demands through process reconstruction, and then fully meets the demands with the combination of software and hardware, so as to realize differentiated competitive advantages of products.
However, "redefining the mirrorless camera" is obviously much more difficult than redefining the panoramic camera.
02 New Opportunities for New Players
The mirrorless camera is a continuously growing niche market.
After being impacted by smartphones for a long time, the digital camera market has resumed growth in recent years.
CIPA data shows that the global shipment of digital cameras reached 8.49 million units in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 10%; among them, the shipment of mirrorless cameras reached 5.61 million units, a year-on-year increase of 16.1%, accounting for 85% of the total shipment of interchangeable lens cameras. CIPA attributes the growth to the demand for high-quality content brought by social media, young people and creators' interest in image expression, as well as the development of auxiliary shooting technologies such as subject recognition.
At present, users under the age of 35 have become an important new group of digital camera consumers in China, and the proportion of female users, Vlog creators and daily life recording users has increased. The figure of mirrorless cameras can be seen on various social media platforms.
Compared with the competition in the past that focused on full-frame and professional performance, young consumers have requirements for cameras that are more in line with consumer electronics attributes: the device should be light enough, the price should not be too high, and the footage taken can be directly used and shared after shooting. The emergence of new demands brings new opportunities for camera manufacturers.
However, traditional camera manufacturers still have profound brand accumulation and technical precipitation. Take Sony as an example, it is a leading camera brand, and its subsidiary Sony Semiconductor Solutions is also one of the world's largest image sensor manufacturers, which currently accounts for about 53% of the global image sensor market share by sales revenue. From CCD to back-illuminated and stacked CMOS, Sony's sensor R&D has lasted for more than half a century.
Lens is another longer chain of accumulation. Zeiss was founded in 1846 and began to produce photographic lenses in 1890; even today, some optical structures still follow the design traditions formed a hundred years ago.
The advantages of manufacturers such as Canon, Nikon and Sony are not only reflected in a single sensor or a single lens. Behind the hardware integration, the lenses purchased by consumers, their operation habits, and their recognition of the brand's color style are all insurmountable barriers for established camera manufacturers.
Nevertheless, there is still a possibility of re-ranking in the mature market, and Fujifilm is the most typical example.
According to *Nikkei Industry Map 2027*, in the global digital camera market in 2025, Canon and Sony still rank top two, but Fujifilm overtook Nikon to rank third with an 11.8% market share. Its growth does not mainly come from competing head-on with Canon and Sony in the professional full-frame market, but from products such as X100VI, X-M5 and X-E5. With lighter body, retro appearance, as well as highly recognizable film simulation and direct-out colors, the very act of "taking aesthetically pleasing photos" itself becomes a reason for purchase.
Interestingly, Liu Jingkang said in an interview with Japanese media: Our target customers are not professionals. Just like Fujifilm's consumer-grade cameras and mirrorless cameras, we will win the favor of a wider range of users with our unique design and color scheme.
It can be seen that Insta360's mirrorless camera is not targeted at professionals, but the mass consumers it has served for many years.
In terms of product form, there have been many speculations in the market that Insta360's first mirrorless camera will adopt the M43 system.
People familiar with Insta360 told Hard Krypton that the M43 system provides the company with an entry point between action cameras and traditional professional mirrorless cameras: it can not only enter the interchangeable lens system, but also continue its product advantages in lightweight design, video shooting and portability.
The advantages of the M43 system lie in its compact size, mature lens group and controllable R&D costs, but it still has a technical generation gap with leading manufacturers such as Sony, Nikon and Canon in terms of sensor performance, optical design and underlying algorithms.
Relying on the open standard of the M43 alliance — the interchangeable lens system initiated by Olympus and Panasonic in 2008 allows cross-brand compatibility between lenses and bodies. The enterprises that currently support the system include OM System, Panasonic, Leica, DJI and a large number of other lens and industrial camera manufacturers.
For Insta360, which is a new entrant, adopting the M43 system for its first mirrorless camera will lower the threshold for building its product ecosystem. It does not need to directly challenge the strongest full-frame market of Sony and Canon, but can first serve users who are no longer satisfied with the image quality of mobile phones but are unwilling to learn complicated photography systems.
However, this is still only an opportunity, not a definite answer. Insta360 can use M43 to lower the first threshold of entering the interchangeable lens ecosystem, and use AI capabilities to lower the shooting threshold, but it cannot bypass the basic hardware capabilities such as sensor tuning, focusing, image stabilization, heat dissipation and color rendering.
People familiar with Insta360 also said that many of the technical capabilities for mirrorless cameras need to be built from scratch.
This is also one of the reasons why domestic mirrorless cameras have long been absent from the market.
Chinese consumer electronics enterprises are best at quickly completing product definition, engineering integration and cost optimization on the basis of mature supply chains. However, traditional cameras are not products that can achieve experience advantages simply by assembling mature components together.
Insta360 is entering an industry that attaches great importance to accumulation. In a market where the technical rules have been fully developed by established manufacturers, the test for Insta360 is whether it can find a group of new users and convince them to pay for emotional value.