Farewell to GoPro: The company that brought us action cameras and digital image stabilization is sadly reaching the end of the road, but its seeds will continue to bloom forever.
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GoPro has notified US authorities that its ability to survive the next 12 months is in doubt. This follows a relentless surge in the price of RAM due to the growing demand for AI servers.
The company was already struggling to survive beforehand, and this latest crisis looks like the final nail in its coffin.
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GoPro is not just a camera manufacturer.
Beyond the fact that it invented a new category of action cameras, it is also a hardware and software company with impressive capabilities.
Action photography is particularly challenging, with the camera being violently tossed around, submerged in deep water, exposed to ice and flames, operating in harsh lighting conditions, and requiring the longest possible operation time despite a very small form factor and battery.
GoPro solved these challenges by developing sophisticated algorithms that managed to stabilize the video by cropping the edges of the image, rather than through physical stabilization of the sensor as was previously customary.
To support the operation of this algorithm, the company also developed a suitable processor, which demonstrated an impressive ability to operate even inside a completely sealed camera body, without adequate cooling and with limited battery life.
The company's struggles began when it lost its crown to smartphone cameras, which improved rapidly from year to year and at a certain point eliminated the need for a separate GoPro camera for most users.
Added to this was Chinese competition from companies like DJI and Insta360, which offered similar and even better capabilities at an attractive price.
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The company tried to adapt to the new era through a subscription program, where users pay for various cloud services. The service brought the company over 100 million dollars a year, but it was already too late.
The company made mistakes at several crossroads.
First, it lost the government market. Today, every security officer is equipped with a body camera connected to expensive cloud services, and GoPro neglected this incredibly lucrative market, leaving it to its competitors.
Second, it missed out on the licensing model. If, early on, it had sold licenses to use its breakthrough technologies to the smartphone industry, it would have created a long-term dependency that would have generated significant revenue for it.
Add to this the company's expensive attempts to expand into the drone market, where it ultimately lost to DJI, which currently dominates the market with an iron fist.
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Liquidating a company at the right time is far better than its stagnation and slow death.
While most executives specialize in dreaming big, raising capital from investors, and encouraging growth, a small group of executives specializes precisely in the responsible and orderly liquidation of companies.
In the liquidation process, the company's patents and intellectual property are sold to the highest bidder, the human capital finds its way to other companies, and the company's creditors get to see at least some of their money back.
Insisting on keeping the company alive at all costs results in all its technological and human capital remaining locked away for years to no avail.
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My first action camera was a GoPro 6 and I loved it very much. Later, I parted ways with it in favor of an Insta360 Ace Pro, and sold it to a soldier who is probably still using it today to document his adventures on the battlefield.
The company will likely reach the end of its road soon, but the memories and technologies it gave us will stay with us forever.
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👋 Hi, I'm Shlomo Strauss and my posts are not written by artificial intelligence.
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