GoPro is a marketing company

Let’s face it, GPRO does not make great cameras. The company at its core is a genius marketing machine that successfully created a cult user following among sports enthusiasts, and then a global distribution network that reaches this target audience. Since earlier 2014, it even started to generate popularity among regular consumers. The perception of its product is so well curated that it becomes synonym with action sports and active lifestyle.

That all perception aside, I have to say it makes crappy camera and even worse software. Its profound success was largely dependent on timing - it had the right product at the right time, and for a good period of 5 years, its target market is small enough to avoid the attention of major consumer electronics OEMs. 

GoPro has a content strategy. For now, it is not making money from the content created with its cameras. But another obvious reason to promote the content is that those viral videos of epic moments help to sell the camera to more people. But regular consumers rarely realize two facts: 1) those videos are often recorded and edited by professional hands, and 2) without the daredevil acts and breath-taking backdrop of some remote mountains, your daily life recorded will go no where close to be comparable to those GoPro channel videos. I foresee major disillusions from consumers  when they realize how difficult it is to make quality videos with amateur hands, and how clumsy and unpractical GoPro is as a regular, everyday camera. 

As a company making 100% of the money from its hardware sales, it is surprising how little resource GoPro put to research and development, or the actual making of the camera. We have seen 4 maybe 5 major iterations of the original camera design, but yet it is still lacking image stabilization features, a critical feature for action camera if you want clear, crispy images. If we move non-critical features such as connectivity, app support, and editing software, the incompetency is orders of magnitude greater. And yet those non-critical, non-image capturing related features largely defined the happiness of its average consumer users: how well and convenient they can share the video, how closely they can couple the phone with the camera, and how easily they can edit the random video clips into a remotely watchable film. So far, instead of focusing on making a solid product experience (better hardware and software), it again focus mostly of its energy on making a great branding experience. The greater consumer perception is, the more disappointed consumers will be once they lay their hands on the actual product. If GoPro wants to make its cameras a true must-have to capture the everyday moments. GoPro must refocus on the product itself. Without great product, one cannot create great experience, and let alone a viable ecosystem, which is essential for its long-term survival. 

And in the long-term, smartphone cameras and its durability will get so good, that regular consumers will never need a separate action cam to record their bike rides, scuba dive or ski trips. Action cam will be forever confined to the action sports crowd.