Insta360 is about to play a "pickup game."
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A pocket-sized camera is becoming the new battleground for consumer electronics manufacturers in 2026.
The DJI Pocket series has already sparked a breakout success. OPPO and vivo are preparing similar Pocket cameras, while Honor has directly added a movable lens to its Robot Phone, attempting to further blur the line between smartphones and gimbal cameras.
As both phone manufacturers and imaging device makers enter the fray, competition in pocket gimbal cameras is becoming increasingly crowded.
Insta360’s soon-to-be-launched Luna arrives at this pivotal moment.
This is a new product that Insta360 has high hopes for. It features a detachable split-screen design and is jointly developed by Insta360 and Leica, aiming to establish its position in the pocket camera market through a more flexible shooting form and a more recognizable imaging style.
But the more mainstream the market, the more it means that the product itself will not be the sole test.
Compared to more vertical imaging categories like panoramic cameras and action cameras, pocket gimbal cameras face a broader ordinary consumer base. Competition here is not only about specs, features, and imaging style, but also includes price range, brand awareness, and channel reach.
Luna’s launch coincides with Insta360 itself undergoing a shift in its growth logic.
Despite a year-on-year revenue increase of over 70% in 2025, reaching 9.741 billion yuan and coming within a step of the 10 billion mark, net profit attributable to shareholders was 886 million yuan, down over 10% year-on-year.
How to reverse this situation is a real test for Insta360 as it nears the 10-billion threshold.
This reflects both the gross margin pressure from market competition and rising product costs, and Insta360’s initiative to increase its R&D investments.
To further penetrate the mass market, Insta360 is focusing in 2026 on channels and brand building.
According to All Weather Tech, Insta360 will sign celebrities for the first time to promote Luna and other new products, attempting to expand its brand from digital enthusiasts and imaging fans to a broader general audience.
Currently, Insta360 has officially announced Li Xian as its global brand ambassador.
Meanwhile, offline channels will become Insta360’s next investment focus. The domestic strategy is “bigger stores”; overseas markets lean towards “more stores.”
The Contradiction Between Gross Margin and Sales
In terms of revenue, Insta360’s entire product line maintains strong growth.
In 2025, Insta360’s revenue from consumer smart imaging devices, accessories, and other products reached 8.516 billion yuan and 1.131 billion yuan, growing 77.83% and 57.47% year-on-year respectively.
Breaking down by quarter, Insta360’s gross margins were under pressure in Q4 2025.
On the one hand, industry-wide competition in consumer electronics became fiercer in 2025, with platform promotions, billion-yuan subsidies, and government programs amplifying price fluctuations at the terminal. For brands like Insta360 in a rapid expansion phase, they must both seize peak traffic periods to expand user coverage and maintain price system stability, which is indeed challenging.
On the other hand, rising costs for upstream components like chips further eroded gross margins. For example, chips for Insta360’s main products were mainly 12nm in 2024, but upgraded to 5nm in 2025, driving up costs.
Meanwhile, to maintain its competitive edge in the next round, Insta360 ramped up R&D investment in 2025, with R&D expenses soaring 96.95% year-on-year to 1.53 billion yuan.
To an extent, this reveals the deeper challenge Insta360 faces: As revenue nears 10 billion and competitors intensify their offensives, can Insta360 find a new balance between sales growth, market share, and gross margins?
But it’s inherently difficult to juggle market share, sales growth, and gross margin.
From a business logic perspective, if a company wants to maintain gross margin, there are two main approaches: set product prices high enough or push costs as low as possible.
But neither path is easy. The former requires ongoing brand premium and product differentiation; the latter depends on supply chain efficiency, bargaining power over core components, and economies of scale.
This means Insta360 will have to make operational trade-offs in the future.
According to All Weather Tech, internally in 2026 Insta360 places greater emphasis on quality of growth, focusing competition on product strength, brand power, and structural innovation itself.
This means Insta360 will lean more towards new product definition, tech iteration, and brand reach to boost user conversion efficiency.
Heavy Investment in Offline Channels and Brand
For Insta360, one of the critical tests in 2026 is the upcoming Luna pocket camera.
Over the past few years, pocket cameras have evolved from relatively vertical imaging tools into a more mainstream consumer electronics category.
The strong sales of DJI Pocket 3 prove the commercial potential of this segment and have attracted more manufacturers to the market.
OPPO and vivo plan to launch similar Pocket cameras; Honor has directly added a mobile lens to the Robot Phone and plans to bring it to market in the third quarter of this year.
This means pocket camera competition is no longer limited to a few imaging manufacturers, but has become a new battleground for both phone and imaging device makers.
Against this backdrop, Luna’s significance for Insta360 is not just as a new product, but as a key entry into the mass-market imaging device segment.
However, rising segment heat also means Insta360 must face a more complex competitive landscape.
On April 16 this year, DJI launched the Pocket 4, with a standard price of 2,999 yuan. Compared to the Pocket 3’s launch price of 3,499 yuan, this generation has already proactively cut the price by 500 yuan.
Luna has not gone on sale yet, and its domestic price has not been announced.
With Pocket 4 already priced and phone manufacturers preparing to enter, Insta360’s challenge is whether it can establish its own position in the pocket camera market with clear product differentiation.
From the information released so far, Luna’s differentiation mainly shows in two areas:
First, innovation in form: Luna uses a detachable split-screen design for greater flexibility;
Second, imaging style: Luna is jointly developed by Insta360 and Leica. From leaked sample images, its imaging style emphasizes rich colors and light-shadow contrast, differing from the clear and transparent style of DJI Pocket series.
This competition surrounding pocket cameras to some extent also reflects Insta360’s overall strategic shift.
In the past, Insta360 was better at building technical advantages in more segmented categories like panoramic cameras and action imaging. These markets had clearer user circles, and competition focused more on specs, features, and scene innovation.
In contrast, pocket cameras have more mass-market appeal, with users more sensitive to brand influence, price, appearance, and straight-out results.
To win a broader mainstream audience, Insta360’s strategy is shifting from betting solely on products to building brand and expanding channels.
According to All Weather Tech, Insta360 will further increase investment in offline channels.
Domestically, the approach is “bigger stores” — boosting single-store display efficiency and brand presence. For instance, the Shenzhen Yifang City store has been expanded from about 50 square meters to over 100 square meters;
Overseas, the approach is to “open more stores.” Insta360 intends to set up locations in places like Times Square in the U.S., to increase brand visibility in overseas markets.
Besides channel expansion, Insta360 is also changing its brand promotion strategy, including signing celebrities for the first time to promote Luna and other new products this year.
This means Insta360’s upcoming challenge is not just to make a better imaging product, but to become an imaging brand that is understood and chosen by a wider audience.
The difficulty in moving from niche to mainstream is never just to sell the product to more people, but to make more people believe the brand is worth choosing.
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