What should they be doing? They are an action camera company, they make action cameras. Do you think they needed to branch out to do energy drinks and lunchables or whatever?
Their camera tech is stagnating. I had plenty of gopros and it’s just almost the same product every year now, they don’t even bother updating the sensor or innovating and look at how DJI and Insta360 is cleaning them out because of it.
They doubled down hard on editing via the phone app with cloud storage via subscription. I have zero desire to edit video on my phone. Their desktop apps are frankly horrendous. They have cameras that capture footage at higher than 4K but their phone app only allowed export at 4K at least on an iPhone. This seemed to be a limit on the h265 libraries on the iPhone so it might be different on Android.
If you wanted to export their 5.6K 360 footage on a desktop from a GoPro Max you couldn’t do that in any sane way. You had to export it in their cine* whatever format and an hour of footage was over 400GB. This also used your graphics card to accelerate it. You could export the h265 files in 4K if memory serves which was obviously smaller and faster but you dropped the resolution as a trade off.
YouTube in a desktop browser supports 360 footage in 5K+ resolutions. I believe the mobile app is still 4K only.
If they have a solid product and do not want to make “energy drinks and lunchables”, the best financial move would be to optimize it. Find ways to make it smaller, lighter, and most importantly, reduce costs.
But if I were in charge, I’d seriously think about trying to eat DJI’s drone lunch now that there are FAA rules around foreign drone companies. GoPro is headquartered in San Mateo. Drone design is well known enough that there aren’t any hard problems in the way of introducing a decent DJI mini replacement. There may be patents or other non-technical stuff in the way though. But if they could get in on that, it could be immensely lucrative, especially if they can get government contracts.
They’re still feeling the burn from when they tried entering the drone space. The GoPro Karma almost bankrupted them on its own, and marked the end of their perception as a quality brand. It was a disaster they never recovered financially or reputationally.
The concept was great. The gimbal and camera could actually be removed from the drone to use independently. People were excited for their entry into the space, and they built a TON of the drones.
But they were also missing features. They didn’t have an API for third-party integration and flight automation like DJI. They had no collision avoidance features, which had started to become standard in the market by the time the entered. Their battery life was pretty bad.
Oh - and upon release the drones constantly lost connection to GPS and would suddenly shut off mid-flight and fall out of the sky. The FAA actually advised all users to ground them.
They eventually recalled all of the Karma drones over safety concerns, took a huge stock hit, and went through a round of layoffs.
Frankly, that second idea seems really consistent with whatever residual brand value they have.
Unfortunately, they got burned by doing it poorly around 2017 and seem to have been scared off of playing in that space ever.
The first is probably already done but maybe not enough to keep the niche afloat. If the GoPro’s need replacement, then they won’t have a reputation for durability. If they keep going, then why replace your old one when it already does 4k 60fps? Problem is either they need replacement and erode brand strength, or are durable and can’t compete with already owned product. That path probably most likely ends with selling themselves to some other company that will probably slap the name on random Chinese cameras.
Same as it ever was. Line must go up.
1- make good product, make money
2 - make product worse/charge for standard features
3 - cripple existing products, force people to buy new version
The investment payoff on smartphones is much better. If I make my personal computing device I use for several hours per day 5% better that adds up real quick to serious gains. If I make my gopro I use few hours per week 5% better that barely makes me notice it.
The lower use market needs to make much bigger leaps to justify new revisions just because small stuff is not as noticeable.
the smartphone space has way more competition and their market is literally everyone on the planet. there are 6 billion smart phone buyers.
the vast vast majority of whom, do not need the power in most phones. there is no demand for improving phones, they have peaked. Phones are a commodity at this point, like your average desktop/laptop.
What should they be doing? They are an action camera company, they make action cameras. Do you think they needed to branch out to do energy drinks and lunchables or whatever?
Their camera tech is stagnating. I had plenty of gopros and it’s just almost the same product every year now, they don’t even bother updating the sensor or innovating and look at how DJI and Insta360 is cleaning them out because of it.
They could try and make a camera that doesn’t overheat and shut down.
They doubled down hard on editing via the phone app with cloud storage via subscription. I have zero desire to edit video on my phone. Their desktop apps are frankly horrendous. They have cameras that capture footage at higher than 4K but their phone app only allowed export at 4K at least on an iPhone. This seemed to be a limit on the h265 libraries on the iPhone so it might be different on Android.
If you wanted to export their 5.6K 360 footage on a desktop from a GoPro Max you couldn’t do that in any sane way. You had to export it in their cine* whatever format and an hour of footage was over 400GB. This also used your graphics card to accelerate it. You could export the h265 files in 4K if memory serves which was obviously smaller and faster but you dropped the resolution as a trade off.
YouTube in a desktop browser supports 360 footage in 5K+ resolutions. I believe the mobile app is still 4K only.
If they have a solid product and do not want to make “energy drinks and lunchables”, the best financial move would be to optimize it. Find ways to make it smaller, lighter, and most importantly, reduce costs.
But if I were in charge, I’d seriously think about trying to eat DJI’s drone lunch now that there are FAA rules around foreign drone companies. GoPro is headquartered in San Mateo. Drone design is well known enough that there aren’t any hard problems in the way of introducing a decent DJI mini replacement. There may be patents or other non-technical stuff in the way though. But if they could get in on that, it could be immensely lucrative, especially if they can get government contracts.
They’re still feeling the burn from when they tried entering the drone space. The GoPro Karma almost bankrupted them on its own, and marked the end of their perception as a quality brand. It was a disaster they never recovered financially or reputationally.
The concept was great. The gimbal and camera could actually be removed from the drone to use independently. People were excited for their entry into the space, and they built a TON of the drones.
But they were also missing features. They didn’t have an API for third-party integration and flight automation like DJI. They had no collision avoidance features, which had started to become standard in the market by the time the entered. Their battery life was pretty bad.
Oh - and upon release the drones constantly lost connection to GPS and would suddenly shut off mid-flight and fall out of the sky. The FAA actually advised all users to ground them.
They eventually recalled all of the Karma drones over safety concerns, took a huge stock hit, and went through a round of layoffs.
Frankly, that second idea seems really consistent with whatever residual brand value they have.
Unfortunately, they got burned by doing it poorly around 2017 and seem to have been scared off of playing in that space ever.
The first is probably already done but maybe not enough to keep the niche afloat. If the GoPro’s need replacement, then they won’t have a reputation for durability. If they keep going, then why replace your old one when it already does 4k 60fps? Problem is either they need replacement and erode brand strength, or are durable and can’t compete with already owned product. That path probably most likely ends with selling themselves to some other company that will probably slap the name on random Chinese cameras.
Mini drone that follows/records the user and wide angle panoramas of the surrounding area at the same time.
Get to it, gopro. Be the change you wish to see.
make action cameras that people want to buy?
instead of pushing the same product with minor updates for greater costs which bring no benefit to the consumer?
They might try making cameras that don’t overheat and shut down after 10 minutes…
Precisely. They used to make better products than they do now.
The problems with their products got worse generation on generation. Their older products were more reliable.
Same as it ever was. Line must go up.
1- make good product, make money
2 - make product worse/charge for standard features
3 - cripple existing products, force people to buy new version
Works for smartphone manufactuters though
The investment payoff on smartphones is much better. If I make my personal computing device I use for several hours per day 5% better that adds up real quick to serious gains. If I make my gopro I use few hours per week 5% better that barely makes me notice it.
The lower use market needs to make much bigger leaps to justify new revisions just because small stuff is not as noticeable.
the smartphone space has way more competition and their market is literally everyone on the planet. there are 6 billion smart phone buyers.
the vast vast majority of whom, do not need the power in most phones. there is no demand for improving phones, they have peaked. Phones are a commodity at this point, like your average desktop/laptop.