Will the future of GoPro depend on software?

Two ends of the immersive video content creation are working to come together - the capture and the editing. We hope the end result is what they project their goal to be: easy to create 360-degree videos...

GoPro Needs a Hero Can a shift to software save the action camera giant?

www.theverge.com By Sean O'Kane The next time you shoot video with your phone, Nick Woodman wants you to edit it with GoPro software. Then he wants you to do that again and again and again. It will be so good and fast and easy that you’ll get a rush, like a surfer riding the barrel of a wave, or a skateboarder stomping the perfect trick. And then that rush will keep you coming back for more. Woodman thinks this could turn you into a "habitual storyteller," and maybe then, if you don’t already own a GoPro, you might want to buy one. The CEO and founder of GoPro is sitting at his desk on the third floor of the company’s headquarters, located in a severely nondescript business park in San Mateo, California. We’re talking about the next phase of his company and Woodman, typically buoyant in interviews, is having a moment. "One really exciting aspect of our brand is how many people like it, whether they’re a customer or not," he says. "It’s one of the things I’m most proud of, I’m all — it makes me a little bit teary-eyed," he says, actually dabbing the corner of his eye. 2015 WAS NOT A GREAT YEAR FOR GOPRO 2015 was, by all accounts, not a great year for GoPro. The company, famous for wearable cameras targeted toward surfers, mountain climbers, and anyone else living on the edge, shipped more cameras than ever, but its revenue dropped 31 percent between the fourth quarters of 2014 and 2015. By the end of last year, GoPro’s stock value dropped to less than half of its original 2014 posting price. "Our growth rate has slowed, and some analysts have attributed this to competitive threats and our ability to address a market beyond our core customer," Woodman said during that first investor call of 2016, though he disputed that analysis. In February, GoPro laid off 7 percent of its staff and scaled back projections. In his first investor call of 2015, Woodman sounded jubilant. During the first one of 2016, he sounded as if he were in mourning...[continue reading]

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