Do you remember the days when GoPro was synonymous with action cameras? At its peak in 2015, the US company reigned supreme with around 6.6 million units sold that year and a market share of over 70%. Today, the pioneer is fighting for survival.
GoPro's biggest rivals, DJI and Insta360, entered the action camera market in 2019 and 2021, respectively. Today, they account for more than 90% of global smart handheld camera sales. Alexander Hannemann, who regularly uses action cameras to film his motorcycle rides, says he switched from GoPro to Insta360 around two years ago.
"The quality is much better than a GoPro, even when I'm speeding up and going into corners at like 80 kilometers per hour," he told DW. GoPro's case is not an exception. Since around 2010, many Chinese brands have not only caught up but surpassed once-dominant Western rivals across the consumer technology industry, from smart TVs to robot vacuums.
Gone are the days when "Made in China" stood for cheap, mass-produced products. "China is still making affordable products today," says Chris Pereira, a Canadian entrepreneur and author with over 20 years of experience in China. "But the products are also high quality." This combination has led to well over half of new consumer tech products globally coming from Chinese suppliers, Pereira adds.
BYD, Xpeng and other Chinese car manufactures sold almost two-thirds of all electric cars last year, surpassing incumbents like Tesla. In robot vacuums, Chinese brands dominate the global market, leaving former pioneer US company iRobot struggling to compete. So why do Chinese companies increasingly outperform their Western rivals?
Pereira, whose consultancy iMpact helps Chinese companies gain traction overseas, attributes China's success to fierce domestic competition in cities like Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Shanghai; highly integrated supply chains and a can-do business culture that allows companies to innovate; and respond to problems quickly. Other key reasons for China's competitive edge include unparalleled industrial automation, the strategic use of AI in manufacturing, responsiveness from regulators as well as relatively cheap labor, which together leads to significantly lower production costs and much faster innovation cycles than in the world's most advanced economies. Joey Cheng, who moved to the US for his PhD studies over 20 years ago, is familiar with both the American consumer and the Chinese producer sides.
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