GoPro cuts workforce, changes sales strategy
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
It comes with a basic set of features. 1080p video and some simple time lapse options. Pretty barebones.
Anyway it occasionally freezes when disconnected from the charger so I went and checked if there was a firmware update and it turns out that the Hero 2018 is the previous year's high end Hero 5 Black crippled by software. Someone put together a tool to load that camera's firmware onto it and now I have a 4K camera with GPS, a wide range of time-lapse and high frame rate features, stabilisation, wind noise reduction...
https://gethypoxic.com/blogs/technical/latest-gopro-hero-is-...
But Tesla did sell a few cars with different battery capacities and exactly the same hardware. If you got the smaller capacity then you got a buffer. Tesla could unlock the buffer remotely, if you give them more money or if you need to evacuate before an incoming hurricane or similar.
http://mikebeauchamp.com/misc/sennheiser-hd-555-to-hd-595-mo...
I suspect a number of Garmin watches at different price points using the same chips, yet each price point has a different range of features enabled. Some are clearly artificial differences. Like my wife's watch can't "resume a run later" if she pauses it in the middle, but mine can. She either has to save the run, or listen to reminder beeps every five minutes until she starts again.
Now, you're planning to launch this year's line of products. You have a brand new premium product that's slightly better than last year's, and it's priced $50 higher. What do you do with all your extra stock of last year's premium offering? You can't sell them side-by-side, otherwise everyone will just buy last year's stuff and you'll have the same problem next year. You can't throw them away because you can't afford the losses (GoPro was trading at $8 in 2017).
So you take last year's premium product, and install some software to turn it into this year's entry-level product. You have to sell it for way less, but hey — you might break even. Consumers are content because they're getting what they expect: entry-level features at a reasonable price.
It's not necessarily evil. Perhaps it was mismanagement. Ultimately, GoPro found out that the market for action cameras isn't as big as they hoped.
Maybe the only difference is Tesla let's you pay to upgrade and not buy a new Tesla to get some feature?
Besides, Tesla will know the moment you connect to the ethernet port.
So yes, people do accept this even if they don't realise they're accepting it.
The cost of every car is the same in terms of hardware and Human Resources. Easier to work with.
If you ever decide to upgrade, you’ll just pay them. 0 effort on their part.
Repairs are also easier regardless of upgrades since there’s only one model.
If the car is resold, they can enable more features too.
If it's better then it will sell just fine alongside the previous generation. If it's not actually better they shouldn't have made the next generation to begin with.
The hardware itself is cheap. 50-80% of the price is R&D. It's cheaper for them to only develop one hardware version and limit the features in the software, than develop multiple versions of the hardware.
Most user doesn't care about repairability. I don't see a lot of people buy the Fairphone. They complain about John Deere but don't look for alternatives. They always chose the cheaper alternatives.
If we could somehow separate the development cost and the manufacturing cost, we could get super repairable hardware. Just like with OSS. If someone sponsors the development the product is great otherwise commercial software wins.
The market will always steer everyone to the lowest common denominator and as a result fails when the externalities of pollution and e-waste are concerned.
Corporations aren't gonna buy a camera and hack it. If a professional thermographer is telling her customers that she's using an E8, the bezel had better say E8 on it. But today's hobbyists may be tomorrow's corporations (My employer bought a C2 after I got sick of bringing in my E4/8), and brand recognition and experience have value.
And as has been said, if they have more of the high-spec units than they're selling (or the low-spec ones were a way to use up crap-binned sensors but might get good sensors too), then selling "the same" hardware cheaper might make good market sense. As long as they're not losing money on it...
I do wonder if someone might've wink-wink-nudge-nudge hinted that these units can do more than they're specced, Mike, you should tear one down... and then sales of that unit went absolutely through the roof. I know tons of people who have one now, and not a single one of us would've paid the E8 MSRP for it, and maybe only two of us would've found the E4 crap resolution useful.
Rigol took a different tack, and started simply giving away the decoders that everyone was hacking them to enable anyway.
(these questions probably show how little I know about these things and I know how someone who doesn't know anything shouldn't be messing with electrical installations. Humor me.)
That one is probably obsolete now, but if you search around you may find that this is still possible for whatever is Rigol's current entry-level scope.
The reason they make their cheap product by crippling an expensive product, is because it is cheaper to do that than to manufacture an entirely separate product.
Is the basis to half of the software industry.
e.g. The cost of developing and installing the full Enterprise version of Windows is the same that to develop and install the Home version. Still, Microsoft took the time and effort to create the different versions, to test them, etc.
For some reason, it seems more outrageous when it applies to hardware.
I have no answer if this is an ethical move or not. But, it seems a moral paradox that requires some extra though even if market segmentation makes monetary sense.
If you think that proprietary software should exist and that companies are free to license their software under a proprietary license, why wouldn't a "hardware company" be allowed to do the same with their firmwares?
When you buy a certain model (gopro or something else), you also buy the corresponding license. Changing the firmware to another one is probably illegal without having a proper "license" to the latter (just like you can't install Windows "Corporate Edition" on your Windows "Starter Edition" legally without paying).
Of course one can disagree that this model should exist at all, but let's not pretend it's any different from proprietary software companies, there's nothing specific to hardware companies here.
I held the same perspective until I worked for a manufacturing company. Many of that company's products, and indeed many products throughout the world, _would not exist_ without market segmentation. Selling the same hardware with different software often makes the company more money than only having one model. In some cases, that extra money is the difference between the product, or even the company, existing or not existing.
R&D and manufacturing are hard and expensive.
It's not a bad thing. As a consumer I can buy a cheaper product and not have to buy features I don't need.
People seem to forget that companies need to make a profit to stay in business. I don't care if GoPro stays or goes but it has to at least break even to stay around to produce their products.
that's besides the point entirely - we all already know that an item's price isn't just a reflection of BOM. here the point is that they're literally just inflating the price arbitrarily.
The monthly volume of any one particular SKU is so low that if they didn't combine all the models together, they would essentially be custom making everything.
For example, if there is a bunch of cameras with defective GPS units, they can still be sold on the low end segment, where that feature is disabled.
I suspect a fair number of people buy GoPros for their association with adventure sports and, after taking video of doing a few runs down some blues at the local ski area, come to the realization that they don't in fact base jump or kayak off waterfalls.
As for drones, I've thought about them from time to time. But after taking some video around my house, I'm honestly not sure what I would do with one. They're sort of obnoxious in wilderness settings and are often banned in any case.
That doesn't mean that niche markets aren't real. It it not going to make any sense to mount an iPhone to my helmet any time soon.
I've been doing photography semi-seriously for a long time and have a couple different camera systems (DSLR and mirrorless) and, to be honest, if I'm on a trip where I know I'm mostly just shooting casually I'll often just bring my phone.
Apple doesn't sell DSLR, I think. Not cannibalism.
Editing and uploading from a phone is nice, but it stays on the boat when you drop in.
It's also huge to have a screen as big as the phone's, and being able to slip the whole rig into my thigh pocket meant I took it on every dive, not just camera specific ones. I can't imagine a better setup for me.
Edit: You mentioned video. The Paralenz is a much better diving camera than a GoPro. It has a tubular form factor, making it easy to attach to a mask strap. It also is natively pressure resistant and can add depth numbers to your video, GoPros require a case. Here's a dive filmed with my Paralenz: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=C1MEynCKlhk
The paralenz can't shoot high frame rate, so slo-mo looks choppy and requires serious post processing. It's stabilization is a joke compared to the GoPro, it doesn't shoot flat color so color grading is painful, it has no screen for checking your framing, and it costs roughly twice as much.
Edit: the quality of the glass in the paralenz is also pretty painful, the vignetting in that video and dynamic range are pretty unfortunate.
I enjoyed doing it for a bit with backcountry skiing but kids meant reduced trips and no real energy to sit down and edit.
Carnage videos of people swimming can also be fun/terrifying to watch from their pov.
They are great for bicyclists and motorcyclists who need a camera that will survive a direct impact with the ground.
I feel like they have all the tech components to offer a dash product with minimal work.
This fraud isn’t big enough in the US, but maybe if they market it the right way or get the OEMs to install at the factory even better.
Otherwise the will end up like the Cisco flip cameras... a nice niche that can live on if managed well but not going to grow big and should be private.
Recording yourself doing sport only makes sense if you are really good!
It's like any other complex tool, garbage in garbage out.
Check out on the roofs, the guys who break into sky scraper construction sites and scale the buildings. Go Pros work perfectly for their use case:
My GoPro videos are wipeout compilations, action packed and fun to watch.
My problem with GoPro was that it became apparent that they relied on a yearly upgrade cycle. I'm willing to do that for an iPhone that I use daily, but not a camera that I use a few weekends a year. After they released a 1080p camera and the remote that let you operate the camera without constantly removing your helmet, I stopped upgrading. I occasionally watch their product launch videos but I just don't want to spend any more on this product space. I think the image stabilization has potential, but the 3D / 360' camera is a gimmick until there are better ways to consume and edit that content.
Another big problem out on the slopes is that phone batteries drain quickly in the cold and operating phones with gloves on is still a chore. Any app-based improvements that GoPro has introduced feel like a non-starter to me in many of the environments that GoPro is useful.
Then, I started mounting it to my dirt bike helmet, just for video evidence if I were to wreck and die. What I didn't realize was just how painfully slow it feels to watch a video of me (barely an amateur rider) on a track. The silver lining being, watching that video has helped me improve quite a bit.
I've bumped tons of fellow travelers that use them just for raw convenience when making travel videos. I.e. I don't just use it that one time a year I snowboard, it also comes with me to the beach, when I try kayaking, trying to get cool sakura shots, etc.
Then there's bicyclists and motorcyclists (again, me) that use it as a "dash cam."
Thing is I'm all of the above... and I'll probably never buy another gopro. I have a gopro. It works extremely well. Best in class. The only time I'll buy another is if I lose this one or it breaks. Sometimes I buy batteries and the like but those are maybe 30, 40 bucks. And I have no interest in their moonshot cloud whatever bullshit. So I'm not sure how businesses like that continue to make money.
This is common for durable goods. You get a spike of initial sales and steady stream after that, the difference is microwaves spiked decades ago and GoPros’s peaked more recently.
I did find one killer use-case for it though: cleaning gutters. the house I was living in at the time was designed in a way that made cleaning gutters very dangerous. I used the drone to see which parts actually needed cleaning, then my roommate would clear them using a long pole with a hook while looking at the camera feed. awkward, but much safer.
Some entrepreneurial person now does drone deliveries of booze within a 5km radius of his home.
well, just let everybody know who broken the deliveries and thus made the whole neighborhood gone dry :)
For my curiosity, would you mind sharing where this is? It contrasts with my experience in the US, where I know a few states made it easier to sell alcohol.
I can't imagine trying to get through this quarantine without at least some booze, and I rarely drink. How are they handling all the bonafide alcoholics that would go into DTs with this?
Virginia/West Virginia/Ohio's are still open, I'm pretty sure across the whole U.S they're still open.
Some find this order reasonable, but most in WV find this irresponsible of both WV and PA since alcoholics cutting cold turkey can be hospitalized for their withdrawal symptoms.
if you care about following all the FAA rules, this may limit the usefulness of a "scouting" drone, as you need to be able to see the aircraft with your own eyes at all times. if you're in a wooded area, this might not be very far.
It's not always perfect, but, it's damn useful.
One time I was traveling along a particular trail which started to get very, very rough. Not 100 feet away was a parallel trail which was well travelled. It would have been impossible to see without the drone.
as an example:
> Launching, landing, or operating an unmanned aircraft from or on lands and waters administered by the National Park Service within the boundaries of [insert name of park] is prohibited except as approved in writing by the superintendent.
depending on how you interpret "operating", it might be legal to launch your drone just outside the park limits, stand there with the controller, and then fly it all over the park to your heart's content (provided you land it back outside the park). if an official actually saw you doing this, they might hassle you without regard for the nuance of the law.
I see these comments a lot here but... what exactly is wrong with companies that cater to highly specialized niche markets? E.g. your Hegels, Ferraris, Tag Heuers, etc.? Companies that specialize to fit some people exactly as opposed to mass appeal companies that make products that try to appeal to everyone but then slightly suck for everyone as well?
Can someone explain this viewpoint?
But I fully agree with you. It doesn't have to be this way, and it's (IMHO) incredibly harmful.
I think the reason people knock on GoPro is because they raised VC money and went to market. By taking on VC, they signaled (imo) that there was a huge market opportunity ($XXB) for them beyond a highly specialized niche market.
Climbing equipment is relatively niche as well. But manufacturers don't really try to pull in a broader audience. (Though climbing gyms do, in part, aim for casual climbers.)
I don't even think that GoPro should be classified as part of the adventure usage category anymore, as most of the GoPro usage I have seen has more to do with the fact that it's a compact camera that's relatively durable or sacrificial depending on your application. What I've been seeing over the last few years is that GoPro cameras are less handy than a smartphones whose recording capabilities just keep enhancing from the last few generations of improvements seemingly primarily focused on that, especially as more people have been streaming video directly to viewers from their phone compared to a recording, edit, and then upload workflow. A few years ago I felt like I saw GoPro's being used for most of the content in a particular edited video but nowadays I see them used for one or two shots where the camera was more at risk. If anything I just see them getting pushed from mass appeal to a niche compact camera market because there's just better competition in this space and the middle to high end of the GoPro line competes with some of the entry level/second hand Canon and Nikon cameras for recording video and unless you have those space and durability requirements in the niche where GoPro shines.
I’ve also carried it with me when documenting something like going for a walk in my daily spot and going to mundane places. I usually do this before I move to a new place to capture those simple things I want to remember about the old one.
Again no one reacts the same way as if you’re walking towards them holding a phone in the record position and I like the video I get from it.
But I also used it on a hiking trip to big bend and it was nice to capture the hike passively and enjoy it without feeling the need to constantly stop and take pictures.
When planning to go on vacation for instance, a GoPro is ideal for kids to shoot whatever they want without having to borrow parent's phone/camera or some expensive point and shoot.
Same for people playing Pokemon GO, a super small side camera that is completely point and shoot, can take some rough handling and is mostly weather proof is ideal.
I've seen footage of hard mountain bike trails and class V kayak runs that I have done, and also seen non-first-person footage of the same drops, and it's pretty impressive how much the GoPro footage makes a 25 foot waterfall seem inconsequential relative to a 3rd person perspective (i.e. someone on the bank).
I wonder if having a stereoscopic camera could improve this situation. I pay no attention to VR or whatever so I don't know if this is the venue in which stereoscopic/3D movies would be viewed but it could be cool. Harder to share I suppose, and if your goal is to impress others on social media then it probably wouldn't work unless people start bringing those helmets to look at their phones while they poop.
I bought GoPro thinking that I'll use it for my "adventures", however, it is mostly unused at home. So we just let our son play with it.
However, on travels, we really love having GoPro with us as it is small enough, and easier to use than phones. With phones, if we are out all day, we are a bit worried about battery life. We also have a bigger camera, X100F, but that is a bit too big to carry all the time on a vacation. So we leave it in the hotel unless we plan to do a photography. So most of our vacation photos and videos are evenly split between GoPro and phone cameras.
The button is too hard for him to push but that's where voice commands come in. I can say "GoPro take a photo" while he is holding it. We have captured some fun shots like this.
No.
I bought a GoPro several years back as well, after using it on one of my camping trips and a trip to a water park with the kids, I realized I don't really have the kind of adventurous, outdoorsy life I was aspiring to. The GoPro sits in a drawer.
You actually have to be pursuing activities that you think are worth capturing on a GoPro or a drone, and then you have to have an interest in capturing/editing those pursuits.
Longer term, there is a legitimate niche for their products. It is the intersection of people interested (personally or professionally) in photography/videography who have adventurous/outdoorsy pursuits and hobbies. Whether that niche is large enough to support a company of their size (and their competitors) is still an open question.
1. I think the underlying problem has been the lack of innovation from GoPro. I find that while the number of cameras in our daily life has increased, the use-case for something like a GoPro is marginal at best. Apple and other vendors have done an excellent job of improving camera technology on the iphone11 that today, I no longer carry a GoPro or even an SLR camera on holidays.
2. Another amazing shenanigan from GoPro was their accessories business. When I got my only go-pro in 2014, it required me to spend another $200-300 on some really basic accessories like an LCD screen. It just felt like the company added barriers that stopped you from actually using the product.
2a. Minor nitpick - Their packaging in 2015 was a piece of work. It took me forever to get it unpacked and even get hold of the device.
3. Mgmt focus - I live in San Mateo and the stink of constant GoPro layoffs made it an undesirable company to even consider working for. The people I knew that worked there all quickly bailed and went to work for Google or Apple. It also didn't help that I only remembered about my GoPro when I saw Mr Woodman show-up on Shark-Tank. I just felt he didn't focus on a struggling company and wanted to find other things to do.
They're priced way out of the budget of idle curiosity for me though. Sure 500 dollars isn't a lot for a camera, but it's way out of the range for something I"m going to goof around with.
Drones and helmet cams actually seem like they have pretty niche applications when an iPhone will do great for 95% of people, 95% of the time. The need for that particular lens and shot just isn't usually called for in whatever you're trying to create.
The 120 degree FOV makes it seem like they're sprinting while the 40 degree FOV looks like a slow walk in comparison. Also pay attention to the little box the person walks past halfway through the below video. Imagine you're skateboarding and that is a parked car. The difference in speed and perceived danger is huge.
I think you are on to something with the amount of stimulus though. I ride a One Wheel which... has one wheel, and the nearer I get to top speed the less speed it has to balance me.
The sensation is different. The wind is blowing harder on my face, I have to scan and process each ridge and change in the road, my balance is different, is that car opening it's door? is it going to turn, that drain cover is bad need to lean to avoid it, car behind me can't go left, does my front foot have too much force, intersection coming up slow down, speed up no cars, turn signal are they going to cut my lane... etc.
Meanwhile if I'm sitting in a car, well... 20mph is nothing, I'd barely notice it. The wind sensation is gone, I'll go straight if I don't touch anything, people respect my area since I weigh 2000 plus pounds.
The perspective is different, the level of sensation is different. It's similar how a go kart feels a lot different then a car in regards to speed despite the fact both are four wheeled motorized vehicles.
Who cares about the random video you took down a mountain, it's fun in the moment and no one can take that away from you. To an external observer though, why should that be interesting?
The lack of speed is one thing, the lack of context is another. They don't know about the ice patch you're watching out for, the sensation you get when you hit the powder just right, or even that you are going 10% faster then normal (sorry I'm a blue square skier and don't really know what goes through the head of people who are actually good).
In addition to many of the things noted here (looks slow as hell due to wide-angle lens and the fact that you are, also, slow as hell)... the video editing is just a nightmare.
It's easy to capture a couple hours of footage of your hobby, but unless you ALSO have the hobby of WATCHING a couple hours of something you already did, the value is just not there.
I've watched almost none of the videos I've shot. Also, I'm still able to use my ancient Hero2. I thought of buying a newer model to get the "latest and greatest" as an impulse buy once; I can afford it, that's fine. I looked up a product matrix of the Session, Hero 5, Hero 6, black, silver, whatever products were available at the time. I just stared at the product matrix for awhile, gave up, and closed the browser window.
Honestly, if their product line had less overlap or fewer products or just.. made it easier to decide camera to buy, they'd have another $400 of my money.
shrug
They keep improving their products, but there are no real innovations or killer reasons to buy some new model. And they all basically work good enough.
Hey, I have that adventurous, outdoorsy life life! Wanna send that GoPro over? I'll make sure it's properly utilized ;)
I'm surprised GoPro hasn't formed partnerships for success in other markets. High school sports, and even younger, are often filming competitions and performing automated or manual analysis to rank players and provide feedback. Schools and Boosters are paying crazy amounts of money for these services, but it could be so much better aggregating videos of ~10 mounted GoPros together to get "on the field" perspectives. Then there's the whole professional sports media market. People LOVE hearing audio from NFL quarterbacks, imagine a first person view.
GoPro have made some efforts in that area - including employees working on special products for the professional broadcast market, "a partnership to enable GoPro HERO4 cameras with a professional grade, live, HD wireless broadcast solution" [1] and a partnership with the NHL [2] with the players wearing helmet cams.
They laid off the people working on it internally and it's gone from their product pages (although you can still buy a kit... for $7,500 [3]) so I'm guessing they didn't find the market as lucrative as they'd hoped.
[1] https://gopro.com/en/us/news/gopro-partners-with-vislink-for... [2] https://gopro.com/en/lu/news/gopro-and-nhl-new-partnership-w... [3] https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1198311-REG/vislink_9...
But it's too expansive for such a hobby and I'd feel stupid with it on my ski helmet ;)
When I did some white water kayaking and rafting my camera would have water spots or a terrible angle.
Sometimes I feel like for HN everything that is not in the bubble is a fad.
Go Pro has a market, and that's why it's a company of this size that has released many instance of their product.
When you start pondering the optical clarity of Tupperware, perhaps it's time to just buy a proper camera. So I did.
Since then, it's been stuck to CNC machines, laser cutters, car bumpers, car wheelwells, car suspensions, toy cars, Power Wheels cars, drones, rockets, and kites. It's been nestled into the sand between the launcher tubes of a fireworks show. It's produced documentation of countless projects, produced a record of machine assembly in case of warranty problems, and taken timelapses of packing and moving several houses and offices. I've used the wifi viewfinder as a "periscope" to keep an eye on the birthday boy's arrival for a surprise party. I'm about to buy my fourth battery for it, because those do wear out.
People who buy a camera and let it gather dust lack imagination.
I have to wade through thousands of videos before I find something interesting enough to post online, but each of those videos has value. The worse the performance the higher the value.
1. On the face of it, their main products in 2020 (i.e. action cameras) are barely innovative, and seem to have nothing to attract and lock customers in other than brand recognition built on expensive marketing campaigns. Essentially, they're selling commodity equipment at a large mark-up. Why haven't they been totally displaced by a manufacturer with a cheaper clone, also offering a good enough brand and ecosystem to compete?
2. Where they have innovated, they've hugely missed the target. In particular, their drone release was just an awful, awful misjudgement. Not just because it fell out of the sky. Not just because it came out at the same time as a superior competitor from DJI. But because it totally missed that GoPro is/was seen as a provider of action cameras - things that can be started and then forgotten about as they record your activities. They released a fairly generic drone, which required constant operator interaction. Had they released a drone with a tether, which could be started and then forgotten about as you ride your MTB, or your snowboard, they'd have likely had a hit, aligned with their brand identity (assuming it didn't drop out of the sky).
I think they were selling shovels during a gold rush.
With the popularity of YouTube growing, the demand from everyday people for better cameras and so-called "action cameras" increased significantly. It should have been pretty easy to see what would be profitable.
They were also taking advantage of the fact that most cameras are complicated, that most established camera manufacturers are slow to change and have a hard time valuing simplicity, and that the idea of an "action camera" was a new concept to average people. Having a relatively small product line also made it clear to people what they were about; it also made their products easily identifiable with their brand. Why buy an action camera from a company that makes a bunch of different things, when the action camera is what GoPro does?
To sum that up, I think they appeared on the scene at the right time and existing camera brands were too slow(at least for a while) and had poor marketing.
> 2. Where they have innovated, they've hugely missed the target. In particular, their drone release was just an awful, awful misjudgement.
Yeah, that seems like a huge misstep.
I would never use simplicity and GoPro in the same sentence. At last the model I played with a while back had an absolutely terrible user interface which made it really hard to sure it was on if it was mounted on a helmet.
I guess this isn't all "ease of use" stuff, but I do think it's all more generally usability:
- The Virb XE has a much easier to find and actuate record switch (physical moving switch); the position of the switch will tell you if you're recording or not if you can't see the camera.
- The Virb XE waterproofing isn't compromized by connecting it to power; the GoPro battery door has to be removed/opened to connect to power.
- The GoPro won't let you connect a bluetooth headset/microphone, so you can't connect a mic and keep waterproofing.
I looked into this recently because I wanted a handlebar cam for bike touring. The answer is that the competition is, by and large, not good enough. It fails on the obvious stuff: resolution, battery life, ruggedness, UI, software support. There are plenty of action cams that do one or two of those well, but no one except GoPro ticks all the boxes.
I honestly wasn't expecting to buy a GoPro when I started researching - especially because my main interest is timelapse rather than video. But after days looking into it, that's the conclusion I came to.
* Airdog have been doing this (on a small scale) for ages - they released a GPS tethered action drone years ago.
* Skydio, more recently, released first a follow-me drone based totally on vision, and then a drone with vision and GPS tether
* Lots of other drones (DJI included) have vision follow-me, although with varied success (based on reviews)
Problem is, the ones that work well (e.g. Skydio) are really expensive, and the tech hasn't trickled down to cheaper models yet.
IANAL either, but the rules are quite clear that the operator must maintain line-of-sight at all times. I don't think this is satisfied by having the drone in your peripheral vision (or behind you) while you pay attention to something else. lots of consumer drones have capabilities that could not be legally used by a hobbyist in most jurisdictions. even a spark can be controlled over greater distances than you could conceivably maintain LOS over.
to be clear, I mean legal for the operator. I don't think it is (yet) illegal to sell drones that hobbyists can do illegal things with. I suspect that a lot of the demand for hobbyist-level drones comes from people who don't intend to follow the rules. I've stopped flying mine because I can't think of anything fun to do that doesn't break the rules.
The built-in software image stabilization on the Hero 7 Black is absolutely incredible. There simply isn't a competitor in the space that even comes close.
I've owned a HeroHD, a Hero4, and now a Hero7 Black. I have recorded countless dirt bike rides, mountain biking, downhill mountain biking ie. stuff that is incredibly bumpy, and with the onboard stabilization it looks like a walk through the park with the 7 Black. I thought it had peaked when I got the Hero4, but the 7 Black is just insane.
The market for action cams just isn’t big enough for multiple manufacturers. It’s an expensive, high risk industry.
In comparison a gopro was like stapling a brick to your forehead.
But I guess people didn't care (or did contour do something wrong?)
At the time, their hardware was only 6 mos. behind GoPro and the software was much better. But I’m biased because, full disclosure, I used to work there.
I fly racing/freestyle drones, and in this space action cams get broken a lot. Yet everyone is still strapping GoPros onto them anyway. This is because if you care about image quality in the action cam form factor there is no substitute. The image quality coming from a GoPro is leagues above anything else in the space. They have no real competitors that even remotely touch their quality/size ratio. About once a year a competitor comes along and everyone rejoices 'yay finally a GoPro alternative' and then its a major flop because it just isn't comparable. Their new cameras have excellent stabilization built in as well, setting them even further away from the pack.
Have you tried any of their cheap competitors? You'll be shipping 'em back to Amazon within 10 minutes of opening.
For example - reframing 360 footage can be done in moments with a smartphone - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gy5zClAirQU
The latest GoPro's have incredible image stabilisation, I mean incredible. Enough so that vloggers and extreme sports people don't need to use separate gimbals anymore. The imagine stabilization is absolutely innovative and crushes the rest of the market.
The advantage of GoPros from the beginning is that they're a small durable camera that takes good footage. With the image stabilization that they have now, you can get smooth footage even when you're mountain biking down a rough trail.
The downsides are: they take a while to get used to using (although the newer ones have a much better interface), and you have to spend time editing the videos before sharing them. Also, it turns out a lot of what we do is pretty boring.
As to why no other camera manufacturer has taken the market from GoPro, it turns out it's hard to build a compact camera that's durable and produces good footage. The $150 knockoffs just don't have the same quality or durability. I still see a bunch of them on the slopes though (particularly on kids, which makes sense).
Still, it's a limited market, and phones have gotten better (and waterproof), so people don't feel like they need a dedicated camera, so it's going to suffer the same that most of the camera industry does.
It’s a lot easier for executives to say “there was this terrible Coronavirus thing that forced us to downsize” vs “the business strategy I was in charge of wasn’t performing well and we have to downsize.” That’s happening a lot at the moment.
Anyone fluent in CEO-Speak able to translate?
He might also be alluding to their subscription services, which make money for GoPro after a cameara sale, but that wasn't mentioned in the article. And honestly, they are doomed if they rely on their subscription services at all, because they suck. Anyone that wants to edit and share their videos is better served by other tools, and I don't think they make much money from subscriptions.
Super-serve? Come ON, man.
I think this is the type of company that would really benefit from an excited and engaged hacker community. The GoPro could be a camera-centric IoT device, used for a ton of things from webcams to 3D imaging to a bunch more. But there's no support at all for developers.
It seems like they were going in that direction early on, then changed their strategy and killed their SDK and dev program. It's too bad. This will definitely be my last GoPro as a result.
Most midrange+ phones these days can do 4k video. Sure they don't have a wide angle lense, but that is something like a $30 purchase on your favorite eretailer.
The problem is that gopro is still selling the same midrange sony sensors, and expecting a premium. If they were doing 8k@60 FPS, then they would have something that could command the price premium vs the dozens of competitors that have discovered sony sensor+cheap SOC+battery = action cam.
Or for that matter, they could move into the mirrorless camera market, but they are only releasing gimicky UI upgrades and drones to attach your camera while wondering why a lot of people are just buying cellphone mounts for their bikes/etc.
So why exactly are the gopro's so darn expensive given its just using an off the shelf Sony IMX277 sensor (https://gethypoxic.com/blogs/technical/gopro-hero7-teardown) and a super low-end SOC?
They need to figure out what kind of company they are. Are they producing cheap consumer toys, or are they making reliable prosumer equipment?
There's definitely a market for overpriced cameras that just work but they might have to widen their horizons to grow.
I wish now that Apple would build an action camera.
Nowadays there are a lot more companies that innovate in this field. DJI released the Osmo Action with dual screen and fantastic stabilization, Xoami has the Mi Action Camera for cheap, and just recently Insta360 released the modular "One R" that allows to quickly swap the camera module for 360, 1" or 4k action. I was in the market for a action cam and went for the Insta360.
GoPro created the market but nowadays I just don't see a reason to get a GoPro when there are arguably better options with more innovation out there.
but yea apart from that, most models seem pretty much the same to me
That must be a very high average salary considering the office space is probably the cheaper part of that.