GoPro has discontinued its developer program

Post by rgbrenner » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 4:08 AM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #28

rgbrenner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but disagree there was a hard ceiling for GoPro. 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 rev…

>GoPro could easily stand for pro-level/quality outdoor gear. 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?

Post by eropple » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 4:28 AM UTC

stryk wrote: post #22

chrsstrm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except it's already clear they want customer lock-in on their products. You can't use the remote app without being logged in (which I can't even get to connect, but that's another complaint). Something about some cloud service that costs $5/month to use. Their remote app is clearly the funnel to sell this service, so why would they open up their API? At this point I'm just going to start buying Chinese knock-offs tha…

FWIW, I can heartily recommend SJCAM -- their build quality is great for a Chinese knock-off and the resulting image/video quality is really really good for the price of the hardware. However, be careful when on eBay/aliExpress I've actually seen other vendors knocking off the knock-offs.

Post by jakecopp » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 4:42 AM UTC

mistersquid wrote: post #27

dessant wrote: post #12

Off topic, but if anyone from their marketing team reads this, one of the activities[1] on the HERO6 Black sales page[2] is a surefire way to crack your skull open. [1] https://i.imgur.com/ZuOmIrV.jpg [2] https://shop.gopro.com/EMEA/cameras/hero6-black/CHDHX-601-ma...

That promotional video is fantastic. Beautiful scenery, photogenic people, shots of pristine nature, even the family visiting a theme park inspires a primal kind of longing and deep pride in how awesome it is to be an incarnated human. 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…

Post by atomical » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 4:45 AM UTC

oceanswave wrote: post #21

rgbrenner wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but disagree there was a hard ceiling for GoPro. 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 rev…

Not only that, they haven’t kept up in camera tech, but still charge a premium price. Built-in mechanical stabilization, additional sensors such as gps and altimeter, color capture could have justified a premium price. Expansion into the drone market came as too little too late, and the recall hurt that effort immensely. Seems like there are video applicstions outside the ‘action cam’ domain - security, monitoring, e…

Post by atomical » Sat, Jan 20, 2018, 4:50 AM UTC

ClassyJacket wrote: post #6

aphextron wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're finished as a company. They never were able to innovate beyond "it's an HD camera with wifi", and low priced competition ate them up.

Exactly, a hundred Chinese companies can pump out cameras like theirs. What they had going for them was their genericized trademark of a name - people calling all action cameras GoPros - which eventually would have or did come back and bite them. Their stock price is less than a tenth what it once was.