Some 15 million GoPro cameras have been sold to date. The concept didn’t really take off until the digital age, when the tiny Hero cameras caught on with surfers, skateboarders, hang-gliders and other action-oriented enthusiasts. Woodman is an avid surfer who wanted a waterproof camera that could record his actions in the water, and came up with the first GoPro, a film camera that attached to the wrist in 2002. If there’s no snow, what are you going to do-shoot indoor videos? You don’t need a GoPro.” “In the winter, you buy a GoPro when you go skiing and in the summer for outdoor activities. “GoPro’s seasons are winter and summer,” Doherty says. “The competition has really soared.”īut it was actually Mother Nature that killed GoPro’s holidays, says Doherty, referring to the record winter heat in the Northeast, and absence of snow. Richard Doherty, tech analyst with the Envisioneering Group, says he saw over 50 action cameras at the CES, all priced lower than GoPros. “He had the original segment all to himself, but now, he won’t be the only one out there.” “Competition is moving in fast,” he says. His advice to Woodman-get an easy to use, affordable (under $1,000) consumer grade 360 GoPro camera out, as soon as possible. “However, the majority of people who would want the GoPro camera (in its current form) have either bought it, or picked up an alternative solution that was cheaper.” “The category is not dead by any means,” argues Tim Bajarin, Silicon Valley analyst who has chronicled the ups and downs of hardware and software companies for nearly 40 years. “If we’re not innovating, we cease to be relevant.”īut is it too late for GoPro? Can they still be relevant, again? VR is “what’s next,” said Woodman at CES. A pro $15,000 rig of 16 GoPro cameras in one unit will go on sale later this year, and Woodman hinted at getting a consumer model out in 2016 as well. ![]() Now Woodman is looking ahead to the next step in action video, 360 degree spherical style. By the end of the year, to goose sales, it had been marked down to $199. The tiny Hero4 Session camera was billed as the easiest to use GoPro yet, but launched with a sky-high price of $399. ![]() The warning follows a 2015 release of a new GoPro camera model that unlike past ones, didn’t strike a chord with the public. Shares of ( GPRO) sank 24% after hours Wednesday, to just over $11, but closed Thursday at $12.48 a share, down 14%. This year, it said it expected sales to be around $435 million, a massive drop. In the year-ago quarter, GoPro racked up sales of $634 million.
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