Amid the summer excitement, action cameras are gaining significant traction. From July to mid-August, the summer travel season has propelled the handheld smart imaging sector from a market development phase into a peak growth period.

The entire handheld imaging sector is experiencing an upswing this year. According to IDC data, global shipments of handheld smart cameras reached 4.14 million units in the first quarter of 2026, marking a 33% year-on-year increase.

IDC forecasts that the market will surpass 40 million units by 2030, with a five-year compound annual growth rate of nearly 18%. This robust growth, set against the backdrop of a generally sluggish consumer electronics market, signals a bright future for the sector.

However, this enthusiasm raises a pertinent question: Where are consumers truly spending their money?

Data from Luotu Technology for the summer travel season reveals that, in the online market for handheld imaging devices during the 2026 summer blockbuster season, the market share for each product type was as follows: handheld gimbal cameras (Pocket) at 61%, traditional action cameras (Action) at 27%, wearable devices at 9%, and panoramic cameras at 3%.

In essence, handheld gimbal cameras and action cameras remain the primary drivers of the sector, with more consumers opting to invest their hard-earned money in these mainstream products rather than panoramic cameras.

88% vs. 3%: High Growth Rate Fails to Boost Low Market Share

From a sectoral perspective, panoramic cameras are not lacking in popularity. Whether it's leading brands launching new products in August or the summer travel boom driving imaging consumption, panoramic cameras are in the spotlight.

However, this does not imply that panoramic cameras have entered the mainstream imaging track. A review of Luotu Technology's long-term tracking data reveals that panoramic cameras have consistently held less than 5% of the overall handheld imaging sector, with their online sales share remaining at just 3% even during the high-demand summer season.

This creates a unique phenomenon: high sales growth but low market share.

The underlying logic is that when a category's growth rate consistently outpaces the market while its share remains stagnant or declines, it indicates that the product's performance is recognized by the market, the category's absolute scale is expanding, and its vertical user base is growing.

At the same time, the lack of increase in market share suggests that industry growth is primarily driven by other products. The growth of action cameras and gimbal cameras is based on a much larger foundation, contributing to a more substantial increase.

The conclusion points to a judgment: panoramic cameras are not penetrating the mainstream; instead, they are carving out their own niche.

Over the past few years, panoramic camera manufacturers have pushed the envelope, from high frame rates to image stabilization algorithms, maintaining a frenzy of high R&D investment, high marketing volume, and rapid iteration speeds. Yet, they fail to break through market share bottlenecks during peak seasons.

This is not related to whether the product is perfect but rather to the potential user base limiting the expansion of the niche category. Growth rates can only indicate whether the niche pool has been fully tapped, while market share reveals the actual size of the pool.

From a brand perspective, during this summer window, DJI leads the entire online market with an 80.5% share, with its main products also being gimbal cameras and action cameras. Brand concentration and category concentration are in sync.

The question remains: How have panoramic cameras been confined to the niche market?

The Foundation of Handheld Imaging Lies in Daily Demand

The true ceiling for handheld imaging is not solely determined by technology but by the frequency of scenario occurrence. This is why Pocket and Action have become mainstream.

The Pocket handheld gimbal camera can be pulled out of your pocket, rotated, and powered on in one second, seamlessly switching between horizontal and vertical shooting without complex operation logic. It eliminates the need to consider hand shake, ensures baseline image quality, and encapsulates professional capabilities in extremely simple operations, bringing the user's shooting threshold close to zero.

The scenarios it covers share a series of common characteristics—clear shooting subjects, fixed perspectives, and users seeking stability and aesthetics.

For example, capturing an outfit while shopping, recording street views while traveling, filming a stage at a concert, or taking photos of cats or kids at home on weekends. Users don't need to deliberately create a special scenario; they can just pull it out and shoot.

Action cameras are similar, with core competitiveness in waterproofing, shock resistance, dust resistance, and low-temperature tolerance. They can be fixed in position to shoot from a first-person perspective without any intervention, minimizing the cost of use in special scenarios.

Action cameras address another high-frequency scenario: stably recording from a first-person perspective in complex motion scenarios.

Such as skiing, surfing, skydiving, and cycling. These scenarios don't require creative composition but demand equipment that is simple and durable enough to withstand bumps, water, and shocks, while also being able to record at the press of a button and produce stable footage when mounted on a helmet or handlebar.

Although their usage scenarios differ, both have one thing in common: users are very clear about when they need to use them.

This is the most crucial difference between mainstream products and niche categories. Mainstream products may not have the flashiest features but often have more high-frequency, repeatable, and self-explanatory usage scenarios.

The Barrier for Panoramic Cameras Lies After Pressing the Shutter

The core scenarios for panoramic cameras are first-person perspective recording in extreme sports and creative special effects short films, emphasizing shooting first and framing later, as well as 360-degree collection without blind spots and the effect of an invisible selfie stick to achieve an immersive perspective that conventional devices cannot.

However, for most consumers, such scenarios are not common in daily life. Extreme sports themselves have strict requirements for participants, and creative videos are even less suitable for ordinary users' daily creations.

This limits the penetration rate of panoramic cameras. Although panoramic imaging is the most complex of the three categories from an engineering perspective, it doesn't mean consumers will pay for it.

Most ordinary users don't need to record a complete spherical image most of the time; they just want to capture what's in front of them well.

This is why various creative playback scenes often spark heated discussions on social media but fail to convert these users.

Panoramic cameras focus on raising the upper limit of inspiration and endow works with more possibilities. However, the highest-frequency scenarios for ordinary consumers don't require 360-degree collection + post-production framing. Most people just want to pull it out and shoot, with good-looking results straight out of the camera, ready to share on social media.

Another obstacle preventing consumers from choosing panoramic cameras is revealed only after the user presses the stop recording button.

The first cost is time.

The product logic of Pocket and Action is that shooting equals finished footage. The material obtained from filming is itself a finished product that can be shared immediately. Panoramic cameras overturn this logic by capturing everything first, then importing the material, selecting angles, choosing keyframes, adjusting perspectives and motion trajectories, and finally exporting a flat image for editing and publishing.

The advantage of not needing to compose while shooting with a panoramic camera doesn't mean users don't need to decide; it just delays the composition work until post-production.

This means a longer creative path. For professional creators, it represents greater freedom, but for those who hope to obtain finished footage immediately, the delay in output itself undermines the impulse to share.

The second cost is storage and computing power.

The standard configuration of dual sensors and the product characteristic of recording spherical space mean that panoramic cameras generate significantly more data than ordinary single-lens cameras, both in terms of hardware-collected data volume and the pixel redundancy required for outputting finished footage.

To freely rotate perspectives in post-production while retaining clear local images, panoramic cameras often have native shooting resolutions of 7K or 8K. To export a small portion of the final flat video, users have to accept video sizes of several gigabytes.

This not only requires higher-specification memory cards but also means that the phones or computers used for editing must have more space allocated for computing.

An ordinary phone can smoothly edit 4K flat videos shot by a Pocket, but it may significantly lag when faced with panoramic footage of the same duration. Users don't get stuck on the panoramic camera itself but in the editing software. This is precisely the last mile that determines whether the material can be turned into a finished product.

The third cost is the structural trade-off in image quality.

At the same price point, with the same sensor and similar total pixel count, ordinary single-lens cameras concentrate their main pixels on one perspective, while panoramic cameras need to cover the entire sphere.

When shooting the same single-angle image, panoramic cameras must cover a larger collection range, meaning that limited pixels and optical capabilities are spread over a wider field of view. When users output the image, the effective resolution is naturally lower than that of a flat device at the same level.

Manufacturers can optimize stitching algorithms and multi-frame synthesis, but physical limits cannot be bypassed. For consumers, what they perceive is that at the same price point, the image quality of panoramic cameras loses to that of single-lens cameras.

Finally, there is the decision-making cost.

This is where the charm and pain point of panoramic cameras lie. Shooting doesn't require composition, and 360-degree collection without blind spots. However, the trade-off is that composition must be redone during editing, and the total decision-making volume doesn't decrease; it's just delayed.

The potential workload may even be greater.

Faced with material containing infinite editing possibilities, every frame requires user decisions. For users accustomed to shooting and sharing immediately, this equals forcibly splitting the shooting and sharing processes, with a mandatory manual step in between.

The combination of these four costs explains the puzzle of panoramic cameras' high popularity, weak repurchase rates, and slow word-of-mouth spread. For young users, most don't need to capture more material; they need to complete shooting more easily.

The most likely fate of panoramic cameras is not to become the next mainstream track in handheld imaging but to become a capability within mainstream products.

When panoramic stitching algorithms, AI framing, and invisible selfie sticks become sufficiently mature, miniaturized, and low-cost, panoramic cameras may be integrated into the next generation of mainstream products.

In this industrial evolution, panoramic cameras will play the role of a niche category rather than a mainstream gateway. They have their own unique value, such as first-person perspective in extreme sports, creative multi-angle storytelling, and virtual reality content collection. However, for mass consumption, Pocket and Action have already taken over the role of everyday devices.