Is it theirs to open up though? When I last looked at it, it seemed as if most of their tech was Ambarella SoCs. Doing a quick search now, it seems they went with Socionext for Hero 6.
Even if they could open it up, it would be a non-trivial cost to support. Multiple products, probably multiple breaking API changes between firmware releases, ... It would probably have to be on a partnering program basis, and for that you need partners willing to share the costs.
As for lowering the price... The market is becoming saturated, competition increased and cheaper alternatives have been popping up. Lowering COGS is hard. GoPro grew up and cornered the market for a while. In doing so, they grew in the environment they were in, but the environment changed and now they have to adopt to the new conditions. That's easier said than done.
I'd say they'd have to broaden their product portfolio in order to avoid/get out of stagnation and decline. I think that was their thought when going into the drone market, but it didn't go well from what I understand. There's other markets for products built around optical sensors (surveillance/security, "smart" sensors w/ computer vision, ...).
Supporting an open developer program is probably not a viable thing for them to do right now.
And Nick Woodman 'a sleep at the switch'. I remember what I thought when I saw he was a guest judge on Shark Tank investing in (trying to) and giving advice to young entrepreneurs going for the brass ring.
How much in sales will the tinkering enthusiasts generate?
When GoPro teamed up with Google to develop the Odyssey, they created a back pack to communicate with all of the attached cameras to get the desperately needed syncing between all cameras. Not only did all 16 cameras start/stop in sync, all 16 were in hsync & vsync. It's as close to a genlock as one could get with a GoPro. However, this was a closed system as the only way to get these backpacks was with an Odyssey camera system. I tried to acquire additional backpacks to add to the existing 16 to add top and bottom coverage to complete the sphere, but GoPro said no.
There are many camera people that love/hate GoPro. Loved because you can put them anywhere, and the picture quality is actually decent for what it is on the Hero4. However, they are crap to work with interface and control wise. Allowing tinkering in this world would also allow camera techs to possibly do some cool stuff that GoPro might not care to invest time. The Canon firmware hack, MagicLantern, specifically comes to mind. The exact same hardware with different programming pretty much makes it a different camera. Canon can't incorporate it, as it would cannibalize their other verticals. GoPro could have embraced/encouraged this level of tinkering as they only really have one camera type.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/gopro-shares-pare-huge-los...
Companies may have an initial success.. but the rest of the world never stands still while they rake in money. Especially not in tech, which gets cheaper every year and can be manufactured fairly easy by competitors.
GoPro had an initial success with their camera.. and it was their duty to expand beyond that into other lines of business and diversify their revenue streams.
When I hear GoPro, I think cameras (like everyone else).. and that was their failure. There's really nothing about the name "GoPro" that is attached to cameras--it only means that because of their marketing and failure to expand. I don't think there's a reason the name GoPro couldn't be put on a variety of high end outdoor gear--surfboards, snowboards, etc. GoPro could easily stand for pro-level/quality outdoor gear.
What's surprising is that they watched other camera manufacturers fail and disappear, and yet didn't pursue other lines vigorously.
So yeah, a sale is probably best for them, but outside their brand, what kind of IP do they really have that boosts their value...
GoPro is kept alive by the huge margins they can ask for on the basis of being the recognized inventor of the action cam market. The company knows absolutely nothing about operating on tighter margins.
The markets for "surfboards, snowboards etc" are even more brand aware, but that cuts both ways: GoPro would be seen as the outside giant trying to buy their way in.
They did have a great brand though and could probably have expanded that beyond cameras to other outdoor-oriented electronics. Of course, there's a lot of competition but there is everywhere.
The same could be said for pro-level/quality outdoor gear. Why aren’t Patagonia, Orvis, and Salomon making a run at the camera industry? Is that their failure?
Unless you mean specifically mean consumer devices this does not take into account the pretty large video surveillance industry.
[1] https://i.imgur.com/ZuOmIrV.jpg
[2] https://shop.gopro.com/EMEA/cameras/hero6-black/CHDHX-601-ma...
If I didn't know better, I would think filming yourself cracking your skull open is exactly what they're selling.
The score--Odesza's "A Moment Apart" from the album of the same name--contributes to the emotion in no small way.
Given the discontinuation of the developer program is in line with the gradual decline of the GoPro brand, the video is at once sublime and forlorn and I can't help but feel GoPro's fate is to be lamented.
One can almost read in the GoPro's plight the unavoidable fate of humankind and the planet on which we live.
OK, I know all of that is a bit overwrought, and this is my first exposure to Odesza. But I was so affected that I decided to buy the album and, I know, I'm going to put it on repeat for the next month or so.
Thanks for the link.
The vocal sample from "Intro" on Odesza's album "Summer's Gone" is from a 1957 BBC Radiophonics workshop [1] - it's a remarkably simple explanation, but must have been amazing to hear at the time:
"You take a sound. Any sound. Record it and then change its nature by a multiplicity of operations. Record it at different speeds. Play it backwards. Add it to itself over and over again. You adjust filters, echoes, acoustic qualities. You combine segments of magnetic tape. By these means and many others you can create sounds which no one has ever heard before."
[1]: https://boingboing.net/2012/05/21/bbc-radiophonic-sound-expe...
They’re all shot on GoPro, and they make a big deal about this. So everyone who buys one assumes they may be able to make videos that are also awesome.
Then reality comes crashing down, and you realize theirs was shot on 5 continents with tens of thousands of dollars worth of extra gear, and days of work on high-end editing rigs, and yours looks like you should’ve just shot it on iphone.
If you know anyone who is or has worked there you know it’s because they are incredibly poorly run. They routinely waste development time on nothing projects, failing to ship code - even bug fixes - for literal years.
Their problems come from one of the most disfunctional managing cultures I’ve heard of in the Bay Area - and that’s a high bar.
I went through two of GoPro's awful, plastic mounts before buying a metal, third-party mount, and never looked back. The two mounts that broke sent my GoPro careening down asphalt in each case, and I was lucky to both not lose it and to not have it be destroyed. So while the mounts are junk, the unit itself has proved to be very durable.
They could have made money from their drone product line by diversifying beyond 'toy'. But that would have required integration partners, different sales channels etc, and they didn't have the skills to build that.
