The Decline of GoPro...What Happened?

The once-promising action camera company has lost most of its value. This video attempts to explain the reasons behind GoPro's dramatic rise and fall.

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Company Declines:
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[Molly-eylq]

I've heard enough comments from totally unrelated YouTubers, from firearms channels, to bushcraft channels, to guys who catch snakes for a living, casually mentioning they lost some footage cause their GoPro overheated to know one of the big reasons without knowing anything else about GoPro.

[FabianJSegura]

When I worked at Best Buy in the camera department back in 2017 they sent me for camera training in Arizona. GoPro had a presenter who was super kind and awesome. Turns out it was the CEO and I had no idea until after. He didn’t say who he was and just talked about the love for cameras. Really cool dude

[shipdit]

Felt like everyone that wanted to own them bought them, then... turns out most people have little use for one, let alone buy another in the future. Infinite growth was an even harder sell here than everywhere else.

[stevenm]

Overheating, corrupted files, randomly shutting off, auto splicing videos, and their cloud/subscription thing. The end.

[jefffrye]

The subscription/cloud model really kneecapped them as well. Lots of companies are guilty of trying to capture additional consumer dollars by moving features behind a paywall. This generation of MBA types are on a mission to screw over consumers without any thought toward those consumers ignoring them with future purchases.

[whodeany]

I bought the Hero 2 in 2011 for around $200, came with everything, housings, mounts, brackets, clamps, suction caps, etc. Brought the Hero 5 a few years later for almost $600 and got 2 mounts, that's it... I've never bought one since. They went down the Apple business model of charging more for less and selling accessories that were once included. That was the death of them.

[Markimark]

I used to work for GoPro over a decade ago at their HQ as an intern, the company grew way too fast and Nick Woodman has been a narcissist with posting videos in his press releases to employees! He’s mostly responsible for GoPro’s decline, since he lacked focus in new products that would make them relevant in the smartphone era.

[Izanagai]

Damn imagine having so much money you can fail try business ventures and then go on a 5 month abroad trip

[AK-ISTHEWAY]

I have owned one GoPro and sold it after a few months because the video kept freezing. Apparently that's still a very common problem because I know quite a few people that use them and they have the same issues. So it wasn't like I bought a bad one. They have poor quality control.

[edwardkay]

Great video! I studied GoPro Inc. for my MBA course in 2018. An add-on worth mentioning for that last factor of a niché (narrow) market is that, in my research, this was the biggest headwind, and it was self-imposed!

Nick Woodman consciously wanted the brand "GoPro" to be associated with an "active lifestyle" brand. Therefore, they halted marketing opportunities to expand on GoPro from an action sports camera to an "everyday" video camera. At the time, there were museums filming tours to be placed online as a "virtual tour" (a concept thrust into public awareness two years later). There were also surgeries being filmed with GoPros with intentions to be shown to medical students. This was huge because it was a visual how-to guide at a nominal expenses, where article were comparing the cost of a GoPro with the expense of hiring a camera crew to capture it previously.

My takeaway was that GoPro was the antithesis of Nintendo Wii, where (instead of losing the video game competition among gamers) they expanded the market beyond gamers to outsell the competition. GoPro opted to stick to the inner competition instead of expanding its market.

[theAndyMead]

One of the big missteps was around 2016/17. I was a dealer - and a professional sports photographer on the side. My product rep gave me a full kit. I think it might've been a Hero 4 or 6. The problem was that GoPro required you to create a gopro account to access all the controls of the camera. Sorry, I'm not logging in to allow GoPro to track any of my usage. For many users that just want to configure a camera, use all of its features, then access the created content, that was a ridiculous overreach. I've used 25 years of professional and pro-sumer Canon DSLRs and mirrorless camers, and I've never had to log in to configure anything. I never created that GoPro account. I did continue to trot out an older GoPro I had acquired a few years prior, but at some point - as you point out - smart phones basically cannibalized much of the everyday use cases.

[aviate]

I have a GoPro 9 and a GoPro 10... both are Black editions that I have used for recording aviation videos and flights I do. I have been in a constant battle with them since I first started to use them. From overheating, to random recording glitches and stops, to not being able to use a battery pack because of a software glitch that HAS NOT BEEN PATCHED FOR YEARS. It's absolutely unbelievable. I will never buy another GoPro product.

[combatwombat]

Using a GoPro is also an excruciating experience compared to a regular camera. Yeah they're super durable and all that, but trying to pull files off of the thing is just stupid. Their cloud system sucks, a lot of the hardware is proprietary. There's a lot of reasons GoPro is going down the drain. Not to mention the fact that they are WAY too expensive at this point. You can get little cameras that do all the same stuff, without all the bullshit, for cheaper. So people buy those

[AlexGelinas]

As a mountain biker, I've had and used a few gopros over the years. They were great when they worked, and a nightmare otherwise. Crashes, corruption of files, crappy services, and overheating are big problems; but I think the thing which really killed them was that other companies came in and did it better. DJI and Insta360 both offer better products for cheaper, and with significant innovations over the latest gopros (the magnetic mount from DJI is a game-changer, for example)

I think gopro still has a chance to get back in the game; but they need to put out something better than their competition, and with more reliable hardware.

[Kuda]

Their tech and support was awful for me. I bought one before a vacation in 2018. I am pretty tech savvy tested it, went on my vacation and the camera had failed on me. I was able to rescue 4 thumbnails. After researching, their "recommend card" had known compatibility issues, but this wasn't mentioned on their site only at 3rd party forums. Their support was less than stellar and my GoPro, with little less than an hour of use time, was the most expensive item I've thrown away. Such a waste. But like you said, bloat and inefficiency is obvious on this one.

[leokimvideo]

One of the best and stable GoPro's was Hero3. It had the audio issues sorted out Vs the Hero2. I've had heated arguments with tech YouTubers giving glowing reviews over the necessary upgrades to GoPros as they progressed up to the current model. The lack of backwards compatibility and subscription cloud really spoke volumes to me that GoPro always wanted you to pay up more at each new model. I learned to be very careful what SD card I used and to keep the later GoPros out of the heat. But the exact same happens to a iPhone when shooting video on a warm day. When GoPros were a simple robust action camera without trying to be a DSLR thats when it worked. GoPro need to get back to raw basics but sadly the damage has been done. RIP GoPro

[BXD]

You know they fell off when 360 cameras have a smaller form factor with a bigger battery life.

[SimonHollandfilms]

as a tv professional. gopro were the ideal camera for risky or weird mounting footage....ext cars, airplane wings etc. BUT. tv companies know that gopro are not professional grade kit. prone to locking up, loosing files and just not working. these issues with software, have never been totally solved. great idea but flawed.

[marsspacex]

They essentially stagnated and didn’t diversify their products categories after a whole decade. Not a good strategy.

[DailyBimmers]

I’m surprised how many other people in these comments have been having reliability problems with their cameras. My first GoPro was a Hero 3 Black Edition and it never gave me issues. Switched to a Hero 10 a few years back and it constantly freezes, outright fails to power on sometimes, and has syncing issues all the time. I use it primarily when riding my motorcycle and it doesn’t give you the most peace of mind when you never know if it’ll turn on when you need to use it. Not to mention the hilariously bad battery life. They need better quality control, especially at the price