Imaging Industry Moves From Device Specs to Real-World Scenarios, Shenzhen Conference Says

Unlike previous editions, conversations focused less on image quality and pixel counts and more on concrete shooting sites such as cycling, live streaming, short dramas, concerts and rocket launches, according to the report. The central conclusion was that scenarios, not devices, are becoming the industry's coordinate system. Li Ge, vice chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles and chairman of the China Photographers Association, said the industry is moving from an era of 'writing the times' into an era of 'shooting and seeing the times.' Zhou Yang, founder and CEO of Leqi Innovation and SmallRig, said professional and mass imaging markets are overlapping, adding: 'Without major development in scenarios, there will be no major development in the industry; without a big industry, there will be no big companies.'

The conference released the 2025-2026 Global Imaging Scenario TOP12 Report. It said that by the end of 2024 China had 1.62 billion short-video creator accounts and more than 130 million short videos were uploaded daily. The report tracked 12 creation scenarios: life recording, immediate live streaming, intangible cultural heritage and folk customs, leisure sports, extreme sports, interest communities, performance sites, story performance, micro-short dramas, public welfare documentary, ecological photography and special imaging. It identified four keywords: mobile cinema, professional institutions moving downmarket, creator democratization and AI image creation. The 36Kr Research Institute's 2026 China Imaging Scenario Research projected that China's imaging hardware market would grow from 116.5 billion yuan in 2025 to 177.2 billion yuan in 2030. Peripherals, not main devices, are expected to grow fastest, at 9.2 percent, a direct sign of rising scenario-based demand.

One unusual participant was LandSpace, the rocket company. Zhou described the co-creation process in a group interview. A user said only that the entire launch process needed to be recorded: to capture joy after success, and to identify problems and improvements after failure. The user did not specify the camera, storage card or technical difficulties, and could not clarify them outside the specific scenario. During co-creation, the team found the launch environment involved nearly 80G of vibration and temperatures above 300 degrees Celsius. 'I had never even heard of that,' Zhou said. The company turned to a national aerospace laboratory for vibration tests and sought special metal materials able to withstand the conditions. The resulting product was the Zhuque-3 Imaging Box. Zhou said aerospace is only a beginning, with office imaging, industrial inspection and rescue recording as further possibilities. 'Imaging will become the eyes of the AI world, and it will certainly become a major entrance to the AI world,' he said.

Li Zhuo, senior product planning expert at vivo, described the rise of a third type of user. In the past, he said, there were mass consumers and professional photographers. Now there is a middle group: creators, less professional than photographers but more knowledgeable and playful than ordinary users. vivo's creator organization has nearly 500 members. Li cited teleconverters. Demand comes from concert fan photographers, who may still be far from a star even with front-row tickets, and from professional photographers. vivo and the China Photographers Association conducted nearly a year of user research and confirmed focal lengths such as 500mm and 400mm that cannot be solved inside a phone. One lens serves two groups, reflecting a scenario logic. On AI, Li was restrained: 'AI will not be everything in imaging, but it will definitely be a very important new technology.' vivo's approach is to give users choice: fully automatic by default, a Pro mode for those who want control, and a professional mode close to a fully manual camera.

The discussion returned to business. Zhou said competition should move into users' imaging scenarios. 'If you are going to compete, compete in users' imaging scenarios, and you will find a blue ocean,' he said. The old saying that buyers are less shrewd than sellers is now reversed, he added. To achieve this, the industry must clear two hurdles. The first is translating vague user needs. The finer the scenario, the harder it is for a single company to go from demand discovery to product launch. Translating and understanding user needs is the hardest part of industrial collaboration and the true starting point for co-creation. The Zhuque-3 Imaging Box is an example: a user's single request to record the whole process translated into engineering terms as 80G vibration, high temperatures and an aerospace-grade testing plan. The second hurdle is unified standards. 'In the past, everyone was used to building their own closed standard loop, but very few companies in the world can really do that. We should jointly formulate unified standards facing users, rather than setting obstacles for each other,' Zhou said. SmallRig's role is changing from a pure deliverer to a connector and infrastructure builder. It is opening supply-chain capabilities from proof of concept to mass production, opening its DTC platform, providing market validation services for industry innovators, and using an imaging industry fund to connect innovation projects. Zhou said 85 percent of the company's revenue comes from overseas, with 70 percent from Europe and the United States. In March this year it invested in a consumer lens project in Jiangxi and will soon launch new lenses for phones and action cameras.

Three parallel afternoon sessions broke the topic down further. The technology session discussed AI vision and intelligent tracking from concept to mass-production validation. The cultural and creative session launched an Imaging Scenario Co-creation Blind Box Lab. The talent session unveiled the Leqi Innovation-Shenzhen Postdoctoral Innovation Practice Base. The report said that as algorithms generate increasingly realistic content, 'real' becomes scarce again. The Global Imaging Scenario TOP12 Report concluded that scenarios are demand, real people bring warmth, and AI improves efficiency. Leiphone.com said the vitality of imaging creation comes from real scenes, and because AI can generate everything, real experience, on-site judgment and creators' responsibility for outcomes become more valuable.