The stock price of Insta360 Innovation has plummeted from a peak of 377.77 yuan in September 2025 to approximately 130 yuan, with its market capitalization shrinking by over 60%.

This 10-month downturn has sparked discontent among investors. Even on Liu Jingkang's Weibo post forwarding an IDC report, the top comments are dominated by complaints and grievances.

The market's assessment of Insta360 is shifting. Investors keep asking the same question: Is Insta360 merely a hardware company stuck in a niche market, or is it an intelligent imaging platform capable of continuously exploring new markets? These two definitions entail entirely different valuation approaches.

To position itself as an "intelligent imaging platform," Insta360 must consistently create blockbuster products to sustain performance growth and support its market value. Its latest move is the launch of the handheld gimbal camera, Luna Ultra, in June.

The Luna Ultra's initial performance was indeed remarkable: it sold out within five minutes of its launch and topped the charts on four major platforms—Douyin, JD.com, Tmall, and Amazon's U.S. site—on its first day. However, the product's release was not without controversy. Some consumers questioned whether its national subsidy pricing involved "raising prices before offering subsidies," and the bundled sales approach also sparked discussions.

Looking back, the Luna Ultra only temporarily slowed the decline in the stock price rather than reversing it. So, can gimbal cameras become the next growth engine for Insta360 Innovation?

Compared to smartphones, gimbal cameras offer superior stability and image quality; compared to mirrorless cameras, they are more portable and affordable. Positioned precisely in the gap between smartphones and professional cameras, gimbal cameras have become one of the fastest-growing segments in the consumer camera market in recent years.

According to a recent report by Jiuqian, from 2021 to 2025, the compound annual growth rate of the global gimbal camera market reached 46%. However, growth is expected to slow significantly by 2029, dropping to 16.8% under optimistic scenarios and only 6.3% under neutral scenarios.

Behind this growth slowdown is the market penetration rate approaching the saturation point among the first wave of core users.

Subsequent growth must rely on reaching a broader base of mass users, which means the product definition logic needs to shift from "meeting the needs of professional creators" to "balancing the diverse needs of different groups."

This path has been successfully navigated by Insta360 with its panoramic cameras. The development trajectory of panoramic cameras has been to first establish category recognition with a flagship product and then solidify a foothold in both professional and consumer markets through vertical and horizontal expansion of the product line. The success of panoramic cameras has validated the feasibility of transitioning from a single breakthrough product to a matrix expansion strategy in the imaging hardware sector.

When Insta360 ventured into panoramic cameras, brands like GoPro and Ricoh had already made inroads but had not made panoramic imaging a core strategy. They also failed to address the experience and safety issues faced by the core user group—sports enthusiasts—when capturing footage while in motion. Thus, it was a segment with unmet functional needs. Insta360 combined panoramic technology with action cameras, transforming "usable" into "user-friendly" and "easy-to-use" with differentiated solutions, gradually broadening the audience.

However, the external environment for gimbal cameras is different. This is a mature market that has been thoroughly validated, with early movers already dominating user mindshare.

Insta360 once filled a gap where demand existed but was not fully met. Now, it is redefining better solutions in a market with established mature offerings. The current challenge is significantly greater because the criteria for a "good solution" vary and may even conflict among different user groups.

An outdoor hiking Vlogger might prioritize portability and battery life; an indoor interview creator might care more about image quality and audio recording; a live-streaming e-commerce host might have completely different needs regarding accessory ecosystems and monitoring screens. Casual entry-level users hope for "plug-and-play" simplicity, while professional creators might be more willing to pay for accessory systems and post-production workflows.

This means that a single product cannot simultaneously meet everyone's needs. To truly cover a sufficiently large market, a product matrix must be constructed, with different SKUs each focusing on their core strengths. The broader the matrix, the greater the coverage opportunities.

Currently, Insta360 has not yet formed such a matrix in the gimbal camera category. The Luna Ultra, released in June, has a domestic launch price of 3,999 yuan, equipped with dual Leica lenses and 8K video capabilities, targeting the mid-to-high-end professional creation market as a flagship product. The expected lower-priced Luna Pro has not yet been launched.

This positioning is not inherently problematic, but the coverage radius of a single flagship product is limited. The 3,999 yuan price point already screens out a significant portion of price-sensitive potential users.

However, the ability to cover a broader price range and more diverse user groups with a multi-SKU matrix does not solely depend on Insta360's determination but also on how long the window of opportunity remains.

The timeline set by smartphone manufacturers is already in countdown mode.

OPPO officially initiated the development of a handheld gimbal camera in September 2025, code-named "Fuyao," with an expected market launch in the fourth quarter of 2026. Vivo internally initiated the development of a Vlog camera at the end of 2025, allocating a team of nearly 100 people and also targeting a fourth-quarter release. Media reports also suggest that the expected stockpile is around one million units.

Honor, on the other hand, has chosen to integrate the gimbal into the phone body, attempting to cover both the smartphone and professional imaging markets with the new category of Robot Phone. Currently, the Robot Phone has opened for pre-orders across all channels and is expected to be officially released in August.

The logic behind smartphone manufacturers' entry is straightforward: the global smartphone market growth has peaked. IDC expects shipment volume to decline by 12.9% year-on-year in 2026, marking the largest drop in history. Smartphone manufacturers urgently need to open up new hardware growth areas.

Entering the gimbal camera market, smartphone manufacturers also have certain advantages: technologies such as imaging algorithms and sensor tuning are highly reusable, the supply chain can be shared, existing channels are readily available, and multi-device interconnection between phones and cameras can be achieved. Thus, it is logical for gimbal cameras to become a new growth pillar for smartphone manufacturers.

Furthermore, "covering the full price range with multiple SKUs" is a strategy at which smartphone manufacturers excel. If they replicate the approach of "entry-level models for volume and flagship models for benchmarking" to gimbal cameras, the market will inevitably expand, as presumed in the optimistic scenario mentioned earlier. However, Insta360 will also face pressure from multiple directions.

On the one hand, the entry of smartphone manufacturers will inevitably further pressure prices and profit margins. Before this, gimbal cameras had already shown a trend of "trading price for volume."

Jiuqian data shows that although quarterly sales of gimbal cameras have maintained year-on-year growth since Q1 2024, the average selling price (ASP) in Q4 2025 declined significantly quarter-on-quarter, with subsequent quarterly sales growth lagging behind volume growth in the same period. IDC also clearly pointed out that the average unit price in Q1 2026 was 2,840 yuan, down 12.5% year-on-year.

On the other hand, rising material costs will also strain gross margins.

Global chips are experiencing significant price hikes, especially memory chips. According to UBS estimates, due to price increases in SoC, DSP, and DRAM chips, Insta360's bill of materials (BOM) cost will increase by 9% year-on-year, dragging down gross margins by about 4 percentage points.

More importantly, before AI investment shows significant cooling, the situation of "high prices and tight supply" in the DRAM and enterprise storage markets is unlikely to change in the short term. Guotai Haitong Securities mentioned that the price hike trend is expected to continue until 2027.

Compared to the procurement volumes of server and smartphone manufacturers, which reach tens of millions, the demand scale of camera manufacturers like Insta360 is relatively small. When supply is tight, upstream suppliers prioritizing large customers is an industry norm. This disparity in scale puts Insta360 at a disadvantage in negotiating procurement prices.

Therefore, while smartphone manufacturers have buffer space to cope with cost increases, it is more challenging for Insta360 to maintain stable gross margins.

As Insta360 has been expanding into new categories, coupled with rising storage costs, its cash flow has already started to come under pressure.

Due to increased procurement of storage components, materials for innovative categories, and inventory for overseas production lines, Insta360 Innovation's operating cash flow turned negative in the first quarter of 2026, with a net outflow of 1.471 billion yuan. Meanwhile, inventory at the end of the quarter increased by about 880 million yuan compared to the end of 2025.

On July 22, Insta360 announced a bond issuance plan of no more than 2 billion yuan, with the proceeds to be used for R&D investment, supplementing working capital, early debt repayment, etc. At a time when gross margins are under pressure and storage price hikes show no sign of abating, this financing is not only a necessary move under cash flow pressure but also hints at the more intense and prolonged competition that Insta360 is about to face.