Oh, they do, but it doesn't ship until the end of November. The Engadget review (dated today) [1] presents a good look at the device and how it compares to the competition -- different trade-offs. Nicer if you're in the GoPro ecosystem, but the competition is a better flyer.
So perhaps the market for rugged cameras is fairly saturated by their own products, and the aerial market has partially sailed while they were working on theirs?
1. Many people buy these camera's that never use them, or use them a few times but realize editing videos takes longer than they hoped it would. So after a while of non use, they sell the camera.
2. They built a good product, one that lasts and is therefore good for the used market. People are comfortable buying a used GoPro because they know it's rugged and well built.
So GoPro's have a good resale value and therefore many people that might normally buy a new one, instead turn to the used market which doesn't help GoPro at all.
Editing is an art - sure you can automate it, but until we have strong AI it's not going to be a substitute for a talented editor.
I've got literal hours of video of some dirt road in the Alaska tundra. No one wants to watch that, I've got to whittle it down to the highlight and parts that folks might enjoy, like the mountain goats in the middle of a blind corner or the moose running across the road. And that is time-intensive; literal hours for fifteen minutes of something I'd share with people. Not just finding the interesting parts, but captions and titles, and some kind of soundtrack, it all adds up to non-trivial amounts of time. One could just hit the "share" button, but no one's going to watch more than 30 seconds of it.
One also quickly learns that from the camera's POV a lot of stuff looks alike. Our recent trip down the Icefields Highway in British Columbia looks like any of a hundred mountain roads when viewed through the lens of a camera. Makes me kind of wonder why I bother.
Automated editing solutions would help, but compared to editing by hand, I'd say they would compare same way as Instagram filters compare to a photographer/retoucher working in Lightroom/Photoshop.
So... they would propel you and your company into the stratosphere of success? :)
I agree with your premise; the hard part is definitely finding the interesting bits. Actually putting them together is easy after that. There's some good stuff happening with "exciting moment detection" based on other sensors; like peak heart-rate and speed if you record those on Garmin.
Not affiliated, just a happy user.
They should sell like apple - "we are launching best ever go pro, 67% brighter than any other go pro" lol
Also, I disagree that the modern economy is unregulated. Quite the contrary, in fact. And it's regulation, bailouts and crony capitalism that protect companies who make awful products.
The profit motive covers (a).
This is a big reason Apple is the world's largest computer computer company despite charging more for the same transistor counts. People are actually willing to pay a huge premium for reliable stuff that they don't have to junk after a year. The market gets it right.
[0] https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3AAAPL&fstype=ii&ei=...
I'm talking about my mom's 1957 Ford pickup that still runs great today. I'm talking about the Ostrisizer can opener from the 1970s that my family still uses in their kitchen. 5 years lifetime for a $800 product is not "built to last".
Not quite that exact combo, but you get the idea: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPF4fBGNK0U
Oh but you're talking about pickup trucks and can-openers. Oh ok my bad.
Were those created by socialist / communist economies now?
What are we even talking about here? Did capitalist economies develop these things or not? Does the profit motive not motivate the auto company and can opener company to produce a better product?
Capitalism _could_ produce products (even high-tech products like phones) that last for longer than 2 years (e.g. swappable chips/boards/screens, etc), but it doesn't, because the rapid, constant growth demanded by investors is antithetical to making products that are built to last.
I think consumer video in the last 10 years went from expensive and ok quality to dirt cheap and professional quality. The same thing that happened to audio happened to video. Now all of that GoPro tech is hitting smart phones and ultra cheap Chinese knock offs.. The whole consumer electronics space has been eaten by the smartphone.
Same thing is happening to Apple. The cutting edge is slowing down or is too good already and everything is starting to get super cheap and commoditized. It's hard for premium brands to get an edge.
My GoPro 2 is still going quite strong, despite having hit the asphalt on at last two occasions at high speed (well, high for a bicycle) due to their plastic mounts breaking. I switched to a third-party, metal mount, and haven't looked back.
There's also more competition.
I'm inclined to think point 1 is significant though. This seems like one of those products/product categories that was a hot ticket for a while. Then most people who bought them realized that they didn't actually jump off cliffs and, after the 10th time, the video of them going down an intermediate ski run was sorta boring and not really worth the trouble to make. So, like many fads, it didn't go away but it wasn't a must-have gadget for the would-be daredevil (or those who wanted to think of themselves in those terms).
The 5 also turned out to be a little cheaper for my use case than the 4.
That's not necessarily true. The counterargument is that having a good resale value allows you to charge more for your new sales because of the added value.
But giarc's point wasn't so much about resale value (despite his claims of the opposite), it was about an active second hand market due to (1) confused first time buyers and (2) a reputation of ruggedness.
It basically boils down to: more people buy gopros than there are people with a real usr car for them, this is why the second hand market exaggerates market saturation effects more than usual.
Whether or not GoPro generates more total sales as a result of their products' value in the used market, they are able to charge a higher price for new sales because of it.
It may be that the higher price does not offset sales competition from used products, but that is another question.
Do you know of anything similar that is available for Android?
My Facebook page hit peak GoPro video 3 years ago.
I was going to talk smack about getting my Mavic before GoPro shipped theirs, but now I'm just sad.