DJI's Osmo Pocket and Action lines now fill every 10 places in Japan's monthly BCN video camera chart, up from 'merely' four of the top five in May.
Back in May, we reported that the arrival of the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 had driven DJI to take a dominant 72.5% market share of video cameras in Japan according to BCN data.
That was impressive enough, but the latest BCN Rankings data knocks it into a cocked hat, with DJI taking all 10 of the positions in its Top 10 monthly digital video camera ranking table for July.
The clean sweep is driven primarily by DJI's full pocket-camera line-up, headed by the Osmo Pocket 4P and Osmo Pocket 4, with even the previous-generation Osmo Pocket 3 still selling well. The latter is no surprise: after its launch in October 2023, it held the top spot for 29 consecutive months before it was usurped by its replacement.
The Osmo Action 4, 5 Pro, and Osmo Nano all also appear in the chart, closing out the DJI hegemony.
It is worth pointing out that if you don’t break out all the individual bundles and combos available at retail and instead group them all together under one heading, other manufacturers do get a look in. Looking at the weekly August figures, the Top 10 'only' consists of seven DJI products in different flavors, the above list plus the Action 6. It hasn’t managed to occupy all 10 slots with different products. At least not yet.
Also included in this methodology are the Insta360 Luna Ultra gimbal camera, the Insta360 Go Ultra, and the same company’s X5 making a brief final appearance in 10th place and representing the only 360 camera in the field. A similar 10th place single-week appearance by the Sony FDR-AX45A, meanwhile, represents the only appearance of what we might call a traditional video camera over the whole period.
Two things stand out from these figures. First, DJI’s domination is truly remarkable in what is thought by many to be the spiritual home of digital video technology. Second, the ascendancy of the gimbal camera category itself is equally stunning. Gimbal cameras seem to have become the go-to camera for everyone from enthusiastic amateurs to pros looking to capture some quick and mostly effortless B-roll.
It’s a form factor that is only eight years old, after all. The original DJI Pocket, which essentially mounted DJI's own drone-stabilization technology on a stick, was released in 2018 and almost singlehandedly launched the whole genre. Given the impressive capabilities of the Pocket 4P, as well as the Luna Ultra, it’s almost scary to contemplate how dominant this sector could be in another eight years’ time.