Good riddance, GoPro squandered their market lead for many years and shipped bafflingly mediocre software that seemed to add more bugs with every generation.
I hope Insta360, DJI, and many more competitors spring up out of their ashes. Assuming fast microsd cards for writes, how much DDR RAM do they really need to buffer videos during recording? 4gb? 8gb?
Yeah, I've heard a lot of bad stuff about GoPro, and most of the GoPro footage I've seen has been pretty shitty in my opinion, so I've never thought about getting one.
So US Ai schizophrenia kills an American company and you’re hoping two Chinese companies (one of which the US has banned on fabricated accusations) take its place.
Man, what a timeline
Curious parallel to iRobot (Roomba): first mover in new product segment, became genericized name for things in that segment, in the end, (possibly in GoPro's case) could not compete in that segment
I got a Insta 360 go 3S camera recently and damn the tech is amazing. What's sus is the mandatory phone activation/allowing permissions. Once I activated the camera I deleted the app.
No sympathy from me. I have a GoPro Hero11 Black and it's easily the worst camera product I've ever used.
Damn thing overheats constantly. 4K60 never works for more than 15-or-so minutes even with an AC vent aimed directly at it. 1080p60 is its limit for any long-duration recording, and even then it still overheats from time to time if I'm in a particularly hot environment. Made me realize why so much of their marketing shows it being used underwater and skydiving lol
This is the biggest thing that I've constantly heard about GoPros... I get that they're small and portable, but what good are they if you can almost never use them?
They even made them a little bigger, and they still overheated...
All because they had to have the top line specs for video, pushing the little SoC to the limit while recording. The heat makes battery life worse, too.
The physical buttons on a GoPro are frustrating to use: hold down or continuously press or press once. No thanks.
The software is bad too: WiFi hotspot that disconnects from your usual phone WiFi. Now sync to the app. Nag about a cloud subscription. Now choose photos and sync to your phone gallery. No thanks.
I assume you refer to the Go Pro MAX2...I bought one because per reviews it was actually pretty solid. Costco sold it so I could return if I didn't like it. My prior camera was the Samsung 360 - which is discontinued. Been fairly happy with the Max 2 - I do mostly outdoor shooting. I can't compare it to the Insta360 or DJI but the reviews says Go Pro MAX2 is superior in outdoors, daylight which is my main use case.
Since everything is processed on camera/phone I hope I can still use it even if they go under.
GoPro has had two years of falling revenue. While I’m sure the memory shortage isn’t helping their profits I’m not sure it is entirely to blame for continued falling revenue.
Can anyone explain the financials involved why this brand, worth so little in market cap, but brand value definitely a lot more than that assumes it is; isn't just swallowed up like a Fitbit?
It seems to me that they went from being a device making company to a marketing company. Their marketing budget looks like it could dwarf their R&D budget. Or they got a really good deal on all of their promotional stuff.
They certainly wouldn't survive if capitalism was working as intended. GoPro is one of the most institutionally arrogant companies around, they seem unable to understand that they have competition. (Which to be fair they absolutely didn't for the first few years of their existence). In 2026 they make a mediocre product with horrible software, and even worse customer service.
In contrast, I've smashed the absolute shit out of my insta360 lenses 3 times now (total cost to replace lens 3x $50), and when I smashed the screen to smithereens, they fixed it, OUT OF WARRANTY, for $50 including parts and labor, and they paid for shipping.
There is zero reason to buy a gopro, they don't have a single compelling product and HOLY FUCK the software is bad compared to insta360.
It's amazing how a company doing something for you that they don't have to do triggers loyalty.
One time, I bought a couch online, and the company kept stringing me along with "we're behind but it's definitely coming soon" emails until I was well past my credit card's chargeback deadline. But when I eventually called the credit card company, they happily refunded me anyway. Now I will always, always use American Express for large purchases unless I have no other choice.
Amazon used to tell their employees a story about how a customer had his PlayStation stolen off the porch. He called Amazon, and they immediately shipped him a new one, overnight, with no hassle. The customer was a prominent New York Times business columnist, and he immediately wrote a glowing article about how amazing Amazon was, which was hugely impactful to Amazon. It informed the company's "customer obsessed" view for years (until eventually there was just too much money to be made in becoming a marketplace for whatever fake stuff people want to sell).
"Underpromise and overdeliver" is bad marketing advice, but it's fantastic customer retention advice.
I'm curious as to what they could have done at what point in time to avoid this? Or was it "unavoidable"?
Apple managed to stay ahead of the competition for years now, but I guess the iPhone and Macs are just more complex products and revolve around an ecosystem, so not really comparable I guess. Still, I'm fascinated by the GoPro "case". I had a Hero 3 back in the days and loved it!
I grabbed the mission 1 pro, the menu is different from their hero line up and actually smooth and usable. Not to mention the GoPro Labs QR settings that make setting up a crazy recording profile or trigger easy.
I used my friends Ace Pro 2 and the menu was great but kinda clunky compared to GoPro.
No allegiance to any brand, but the Mission series software is fast and the footage, especially slowmo, is breathtaking
> GoPro is one of the most institutionally arrogant companies around
> even worse customer service
Hahahahahahahhahaha. It's rotten fish heads all the way to the top.
When I was a pimply face youth I used to take calls for a multi-tenant call center in bumfuck nowhere and we somehow were given the contract to take tier 0 catch-and-throw calls for some MSP out in Florida that did contracted things like call center software solutions. (Puzzle piece for a logo. Out of Miami.)
Holy hell, the people that called from GoPro were awful. Absolutely rude, arrogant management. (And the MSP client themselves weren't a walk in the park either, and I swear they had it in for us alongside GoPro.)
Retro cameras are only gaining in popularity; the competition is increasing, but Fujifilm has a big head start.
And still many concepts to try out. We have yet to see true manual focus confirmation in stills mode (something a retro nikon zf has been praised for), or an autofocus capable lens with a distance scale (leica q style).
Wishing hard alongside you. I still love my XPro3 <3. I talked to one of their brand reps at Samy's Camera Santa Ana 2 months back and he said it's definitely on their radar but the manufacturing is a bottleneck.
I wish they'd update their model lines at the same time. Frustrating how they are all at uneven paces in terms of getting sensor or AF upgrades. You might want an x-pro body but it is what two generations behind the xt-5 now. xt-5 gen upgrades didn't trickle to the xe line until like 3 years later.
They may need to expand their marketing past red bull. Perhaps gardeners, home builders and landscapers. Maybe come up with a marketing package where you can buy a gopro and get a youtube video boost via a YouTube GoPro + Creator video drop (one per purchase).
Yeah, people look down on meta glasses, but my instagram feed is full of tradesmen using them and building channels with 5 or 6 figure followings. Something calming about watching well executed tradecraft I find.
RN the market is not you. The amount of investment being pushed to AI dwarfs what you collectively spend. So the market now is driven by the IPO dream where you'll hold the bag, jobless.
Right now, consumers spend much more money on AI than GoPros. More on AI than GoPro's entire product category (including all their competitors). That's not even counting businesses' AI spending. So it seems like the market is listening closely.
Looking forward to no firmware updates and getting locked out of cloud hosted features.
Good riddance, GoPro squandered their market lead for many years and shipped bafflingly mediocre software that seemed to add more bugs with every generation.
I hope Insta360, DJI, and many more competitors spring up out of their ashes. Assuming fast microsd cards for writes, how much DDR RAM do they really need to buffer videos during recording? 4gb? 8gb?
Yeah, I've heard a lot of bad stuff about GoPro, and most of the GoPro footage I've seen has been pretty shitty in my opinion, so I've never thought about getting one.
So US Ai schizophrenia kills an American company and you’re hoping two Chinese companies (one of which the US has banned on fabricated accusations) take its place. Man, what a timeline
> the free market is amazing, I love the free market
> wait no not like that
Americans slowly discovering this isn't the 80s anymore and that China is beating them at their own game, delightful
GoPro has been squandering their lead for like 15 years.
Curious parallel to iRobot (Roomba): first mover in new product segment, became genericized name for things in that segment, in the end, (possibly in GoPro's case) could not compete in that segment
I got a Insta 360 go 3S camera recently and damn the tech is amazing. What's sus is the mandatory phone activation/allowing permissions. Once I activated the camera I deleted the app.
it's not the first nor the last case. Another excellent similar case was Nokia.
No sympathy from me. I have a GoPro Hero11 Black and it's easily the worst camera product I've ever used.
Damn thing overheats constantly. 4K60 never works for more than 15-or-so minutes even with an AC vent aimed directly at it. 1080p60 is its limit for any long-duration recording, and even then it still overheats from time to time if I'm in a particularly hot environment. Made me realize why so much of their marketing shows it being used underwater and skydiving lol
> overheats
This is the biggest thing that I've constantly heard about GoPros... I get that they're small and portable, but what good are they if you can almost never use them?
They even made them a little bigger, and they still overheated...
All because they had to have the top line specs for video, pushing the little SoC to the limit while recording. The heat makes battery life worse, too.
The physical buttons on a GoPro are frustrating to use: hold down or continuously press or press once. No thanks.
The software is bad too: WiFi hotspot that disconnects from your usual phone WiFi. Now sync to the app. Nag about a cloud subscription. Now choose photos and sync to your phone gallery. No thanks.
And they just released a cool camera too one with detachable lens
I assume you refer to the Go Pro MAX2...I bought one because per reviews it was actually pretty solid. Costco sold it so I could return if I didn't like it. My prior camera was the Samsung 360 - which is discontinued. Been fairly happy with the Max 2 - I do mostly outdoor shooting. I can't compare it to the Insta360 or DJI but the reviews says Go Pro MAX2 is superior in outdoors, daylight which is my main use case.
Since everything is processed on camera/phone I hope I can still use it even if they go under.
No it's Mission 1 Pro ILS it's like a DSLR/mirrorless (as in metal locking ring) pretty legit
But there's no autofocus support from the camera, so there's a lot more work to get/keep things in focus.
GoPro has had two years of falling revenue. While I’m sure the memory shortage isn’t helping their profits I’m not sure it is entirely to blame for continued falling revenue.
I honestly thought GoPro and FitBit had both been stomped out a long time ago, and we were just watching new companies brand-squatting.
Unfortunately I feel this was inevitable as GoPro did not stay on top of hardware design.
DJI and Insta360 offer compelling products. And budget, lower quality 1080p-4k action cams got eaten by Akaso and other clones.
Can anyone explain the financials involved why this brand, worth so little in market cap, but brand value definitely a lot more than that assumes it is; isn't just swallowed up like a Fitbit?
It seems to me that they went from being a device making company to a marketing company. Their marketing budget looks like it could dwarf their R&D budget. Or they got a really good deal on all of their promotional stuff.
They certainly wouldn't survive if capitalism was working as intended. GoPro is one of the most institutionally arrogant companies around, they seem unable to understand that they have competition. (Which to be fair they absolutely didn't for the first few years of their existence). In 2026 they make a mediocre product with horrible software, and even worse customer service.
In contrast, I've smashed the absolute shit out of my insta360 lenses 3 times now (total cost to replace lens 3x $50), and when I smashed the screen to smithereens, they fixed it, OUT OF WARRANTY, for $50 including parts and labor, and they paid for shipping.
There is zero reason to buy a gopro, they don't have a single compelling product and HOLY FUCK the software is bad compared to insta360.
It's amazing how a company doing something for you that they don't have to do triggers loyalty.
One time, I bought a couch online, and the company kept stringing me along with "we're behind but it's definitely coming soon" emails until I was well past my credit card's chargeback deadline. But when I eventually called the credit card company, they happily refunded me anyway. Now I will always, always use American Express for large purchases unless I have no other choice.
Amazon used to tell their employees a story about how a customer had his PlayStation stolen off the porch. He called Amazon, and they immediately shipped him a new one, overnight, with no hassle. The customer was a prominent New York Times business columnist, and he immediately wrote a glowing article about how amazing Amazon was, which was hugely impactful to Amazon. It informed the company's "customer obsessed" view for years (until eventually there was just too much money to be made in becoming a marketplace for whatever fake stuff people want to sell).
"Underpromise and overdeliver" is bad marketing advice, but it's fantastic customer retention advice.
I'm curious as to what they could have done at what point in time to avoid this? Or was it "unavoidable"?
Apple managed to stay ahead of the competition for years now, but I guess the iPhone and Macs are just more complex products and revolve around an ecosystem, so not really comparable I guess. Still, I'm fascinated by the GoPro "case". I had a Hero 3 back in the days and loved it!
I grabbed the mission 1 pro, the menu is different from their hero line up and actually smooth and usable. Not to mention the GoPro Labs QR settings that make setting up a crazy recording profile or trigger easy.
I used my friends Ace Pro 2 and the menu was great but kinda clunky compared to GoPro.
No allegiance to any brand, but the Mission series software is fast and the footage, especially slowmo, is breathtaking
> GoPro is one of the most institutionally arrogant companies around > even worse customer service
Hahahahahahahhahaha. It's rotten fish heads all the way to the top.
When I was a pimply face youth I used to take calls for a multi-tenant call center in bumfuck nowhere and we somehow were given the contract to take tier 0 catch-and-throw calls for some MSP out in Florida that did contracted things like call center software solutions. (Puzzle piece for a logo. Out of Miami.)
Holy hell, the people that called from GoPro were awful. Absolutely rude, arrogant management. (And the MSP client themselves weren't a walk in the park either, and I swear they had it in for us alongside GoPro.)
I don't care so much about GoPro. I am worried about Fujifilm though, they seem on the cusp of a golden era.
I hope they are working hard on the xpro4!
Retro cameras are only gaining in popularity; the competition is increasing, but Fujifilm has a big head start.
And still many concepts to try out. We have yet to see true manual focus confirmation in stills mode (something a retro nikon zf has been praised for), or an autofocus capable lens with a distance scale (leica q style).
Curious what defines a retro camera for you? You mean a digital camera that imitates some analog feel?
Wishing hard alongside you. I still love my XPro3 <3. I talked to one of their brand reps at Samy's Camera Santa Ana 2 months back and he said it's definitely on their radar but the manufacturing is a bottleneck.
I wish they'd update their model lines at the same time. Frustrating how they are all at uneven paces in terms of getting sensor or AF upgrades. You might want an x-pro body but it is what two generations behind the xt-5 now. xt-5 gen upgrades didn't trickle to the xe line until like 3 years later.
They may need to expand their marketing past red bull. Perhaps gardeners, home builders and landscapers. Maybe come up with a marketing package where you can buy a gopro and get a youtube video boost via a YouTube GoPro + Creator video drop (one per purchase).
How have they not competed in the cop bodycam space?
Yeah, people look down on meta glasses, but my instagram feed is full of tradesmen using them and building channels with 5 or 6 figure followings. Something calming about watching well executed tradecraft I find.
But people want a GoPro, and people hate AI. It's like the market isn't listening or something.
RN the market is not you. The amount of investment being pushed to AI dwarfs what you collectively spend. So the market now is driven by the IPO dream where you'll hold the bag, jobless.
Investment is not demand. You are describing the problem. That irrational exuberance is why the AI money pit is going to implode.
GoPro issue is that memory chips are too expensive. And new memory chip factories are not being created, because that is long term investment.
Right now, consumers spend much more money on AI than GoPros. More on AI than GoPro's entire product category (including all their competitors). That's not even counting businesses' AI spending. So it seems like the market is listening closely.