In a week DJI seem to have a lot of battles opening up, the company has still managed to make an FCC filing for 2ANDR-0QR0012024 – an Osmo 360 – if the Rumor sites and feeds are to be believed anyway!
The battles are another story – but involve taking the US DoD to court and trouble in customs. Still, it's good to see the wheels of the FCC are still turning, and might amount to a momentous new product category for DJI.
It would be DJI's first 360-degree action camera, doubly fascinating in the context of a firm which has unseated GoPro from the action camera tech crown – Osmo Action 5 Pro v GoPro Hero 13 Black and given the backdrop of delays in the new 360-degree camera from GoPro.
GoPro brought out its first useful 360-degree camera – the GoPro Max – in 2019, but has fallen well behind when it comes to the best 360-degree camera ground to the likes of the Insta360 X4. A "GoPro Max 2" is expected but now it looks like there will be even more competition.
A new Osmo 360 wouldn't be a complete surprise for DJI rumor feeds – indeed there have been some images in other tweets like the one above from @DJIRumor but they don't seem to match the filing images, shown above, which were circulated by PhotoRumors.
The pics look a bit like a wider version of the Kandao QooCam 3 – a potential competitor – but with the back-to-back lens arrangement of the Insta360 X4.
Insta360 – not GoPro – currently dominates the 360-degree action camera market, not only with better 8K tech (Kandao can compete there too with the QooCam 3 Ultra), but with extensive software tools for their users.
If DJI are to join this space, it'll be interesting to see how they address the stitching/editing solutions. The (arguable) need for software makes it a harder market to join. Kandao's recent offerings have relied on phone apps, which is a friendly and modern workflow. The downside is that it eats up a lot of battery.
Insta360 offer this but also has plugins for Premier and Final Cut Pro. GoPro also offers desktop software. Failing that, 360-degree cameras can get away without software at all; YouTube, for example, will let the viewer pan the view. It seems likely, though, given DJI's subject tracking features in drones and on the Osmo Action 5 Pro, the company would be able to include these features in retrospective editing from a 360-degree camera.
There are other new products expected soon from DJI, as our drone rumors page shows.
