More About the GoPro Drone on the Way

We have earlier reported that a launch of a GoPro drone is on the way. Earlies this year the GoPro CEO Nick Woodman officially stated that the company is in the process of developing a quadcopter.

The new drone will be geared towards customers and its official launch on the market can be expected in the first half of 2016.

Needless to say, the quadcopter will be using GoPro cameras. The cameras, however, will remain compatible with other drone varieties, as well.

According to a detailed Forbes report, the move on GoPro’s behalf is nothing but logical. The company seems already behind, missing on the opportunity that many others have already seized. The China-based DJI and 3D Robotics are some of the companies that have made their confident first steps on the drone market.

As the years pass, the demand for quality drones is expected to peak. The market leader in the niche, DJI, generated revenue of 75 million dollars in a single month earlier in 2015. GoPro’s current market capitalization is 7.5 billion dollars, in comparison to DJI’s eight billion dollars.These numbers shed some light on why GoPro has made the decision to diversify its product range and work on drone development.

Expectedly, GoPro shares registered an increase of 6.5 percent a day after the drone announcement.

“A drone opens up a perspective for our world that we’ve never seen before,” Woodman said during the official announcement. The GoPro cameras are tiny and powerful enough to support the new development.

Cloud Based Sharing

Apart from working on its drone, the company has also launched a couple of software solutions that give clients more control and flexibility in terms of creating, editing and sharing their footage. GoPro already has successful social media integration and Instagram GoPro videos. A cloud-based solution is currently being built. All of the content that the drone has captured will then be easy to upload to the cloud, edit and share.

The full impact of the new development is yet to be seen. It could, however, change the dynamics between GoPro and partners like 3D Robotics. 3D Robotics is the first company to feature GoPro branding elements on product packaging. It was a perfect partnership between a camera and a drone manufacturer that will now have to be redefined.

According to an official 3D Robotics announcement, the GoPro move wasn’t unexpected. 3D Robotics SEO Chris Anderson said that drone manufacturing is not a “zero-sum game” and the appearance of new players on the market is only going to bring awareness up.