GoPro – Almost a hero

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GoPro almost gets it right. 

• GoPro’s launch of its Karma drone and the update to its camera line with the Hero 5 Black and the Hero 5 Session are strong launches but once again GoPro falls over when it comes to software and service.
• First: Karma Drone
• This is now clearly the flagship product, offering both a drone and a handheld camera with stabiliser in a single package.
• A vast amount of thought has gone into this product and GoPro has produced a drone that intends to be as easy to use and versatile as possible.
• As a result, it makes some compromises between ease of use and advanced features.
• However, I think that for almost all users, ease of use is the single biggest issue that they have with flying a drone.
• What I think GoPro has done really well is to include as much autonomy into the product that it can without compromising reliability.
• This is where DJI really falls over with the Phantom 4 which includes obstacle avoidance but in reality, it doesn’t really work as it should.
  • First: It won’t avoid all obstacles and will crash into things like power cables.
  • Second: The default position with this product is to hand control back to the user when it gets into trouble.
  • In many ways this is self-defeating as these are exactly the times when the user needs autonomy the most.
• Karma’s autonomy is extremely limited and GoPro has done very well in avoiding the temptation to include features that will help sell the product but which won’t really work as the user expects.
• The pickle that Lily Robotics has got itself into with its autonomous Lily drone is a great example of what a bad idea this is.
• In this regard, I think GoPro has come up with a very competitive product although I think that the end market for drones is far from big enough to bring meaningful new growth to GoPro.
• Second: Hero 5.
• There are two products in the line-up the Hero 5 Black and the Hero 5 Session.
• Both of these are solid updates and add image stabilisation, voice control as well as auto-upload of video to the cloud.
• Third: GoPro Plus.
• Unfortunately, this is where it all falls to pieces as I think that by charging for its cloud service, giving very limited capacity and only allowing GoPro camera content GoPro has ensured failure.
• GoPro Plus is selling for $4.99 a month but it is limited to 35 hours of 1080p video or 62,500 12MP pictures.
• I suspect that this is going to turn off the vast majority of users and it is likely that there will be a host of players, such as Google, that will offer this service for nothing.
• This is where I see GoPro continuing to completely misunderstand what will drive its business over the next 3 to 5 years.
• Its ability to differentiate in cameras has already evaporated and this use case for a drone will be quickly copied if proves to be popular.
• I think that GoPro should have made its cloud service both free to use and open to non-GoPro cameras.
• GoPro badly needs user loyalty and if it was winning hearts and minds in the cloud, there would be a much better chance of those users choosing a GoPro when they come to buy a new camera.
• Furthermore, if everyone was using GoPro tools for editing video then there would be a lot of insight that GoPro would be able to draw on from using AI to analyse the data.
• Furthermore, it would have built a community around its service that could in turn be monetised in ways other than selling cameras.
• This is where Google, Amazon, Facebook, Baidu and Alibaba are likely to enter as they understand the value that owning the community can bring to them in the long-run.
• Consequently, I fear that any bump in profits that these products provide will be short-lived as the ravages of Chinese competition have never been harder or faster.
• The only device companies that I think have a sustainable position at the moment are Apple, and Samsung.
• Investing elsewhere could prove very painful.