

GoPro Evolution: From 35mm Film To America's Fastest-Growing Camera Company - thealexknapp
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2013/03/04/gopro-evolution-from-35mm-film-to-americas-fastest-growing-camera-company/

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3327
The key to GoPro is content. As the saying goes, "Content is King". Camera
Phones just do not create contact, "on Par" with a goPro generally speaking.
Think of your average Camera Phone user, and average Gopro user... The average
content generated from the goPro, although - probably not impressive like the
footage you see in the adverts, is still going to be superior to average
content from a phone camera. Naturally the goPro user has acquired the camera
because his average state when using the camera is "something Exciting", and,
the average state of the average phone camera user (when grabbing footage) is
perhaps "I will share this with my friends" or "this looks cool" (whatever you
want to label it).

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alexcroox
Absolutely, I built a passion project a couple of years ago because I found so
many amazing videos I wanted to share. They just all happened to be GoPro
ones! [http://goproheroes.com/gopro-hero3-black-edition-smaller-
lig...](http://goproheroes.com/gopro-hero3-black-edition-smaller-lighter-
and-2x-more-powerful)

It's also worth mentioning they are the only company I know that gives away
everything they sell to one lucky winner every single day!

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subsystem
Meh, consumer news.

As far as I know the GoPro is based on Ambarella’s platforms. Here are some
specifications, a teardown and a look at their newest platform:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1nsYd3lG60>
[http://www.ambarella.com/products/consumer-hybrid-
cameras.ht...](http://www.ambarella.com/products/consumer-hybrid-cameras.html)
[http://www.anandtech.com/show/6652/ambarella-
announces-a9-ca...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6652/ambarella-
announces-a9-camera-soc-successor-to-the-a7-in-gopro-hero-3-black)

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faramarz
Not to down play the immense success, but having a prominent Silicon Valley VC
father and a 100k initial investment on his part must have been crucial in
getting the injection mouldings done and ready for volume production.

That was pre-kickstarter days. Kickstarter has levelled the playing ground for
other hardware entrepreneurs in getting early support to pay for the tooling
and moulding process.

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mikek
The competition for the GoPro isn't cellphones. It's Google Glass.

~~~
rplnt
It's neither probably. Their competition is other "action" cameras within more
convenient packages. Luckily for GoPro they still excel in video quality (in
their category).

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SideburnsOfDoom
Yes. I was thinking particularly of the #2 action camera vendor, Contour (
<http://contour.com/> ) as the GoPro's main competition right now.

Though Google glass and whoever competes with it will get there too,
eventually.

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nawitus
It'll be interesting to see if they can compete with cameraphones. GoPro does
have a few differentation strategies. First is that they'll offer higher
quality video than phones. However, the video quality on phones will get
better all the time, and the difference in quality will become smaller every
year.

Another strategy is that they can compete with price. Consumers can always buy
a case and a strap to house their smartphone in, but if you're filming sports
there's a quite high risk to destroy the phone. The price of GoPro-style video
cameras will go down over time (if they won't constantly add new features in),
but the cost of phones will probably stay high in the future.

Consumers will likely choose the $79 camera instead of risking their $500
phone to film sports.

~~~
Retric
There is always going to be a significant low light advantage to having a
larger lense and sensor. Add a mourning bracket / wrist strap, improved noise
reduction and there is only so close a camera phone can get.

~~~
nawitus
Yes, that's true, but when camera phones will be as good as e.g. Canon 5D Mark
iii (and they will, relatively soon even) then that quality will be good
enough for practically everyone. At that point only professionals need better
quality.

~~~
sparky
How does this prediction jibe with the statement that a larger sensor will
always be beneficial, especially in low light?

Will smartphones be able to include much larger sensors in the future?

Is there some new physics that obviates the need for a large sensor?

The 5D Mark III has > 24x the sensor area of an iPhone 5, and most smartphones
are even worse off [0] [1]

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_sensor_interchang...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_large_sensor_interchangeable-
lens_video_cameras) [1]
[http://www.chipworks.com/blog/recentteardowns/2012/09/21/app...](http://www.chipworks.com/blog/recentteardowns/2012/09/21/apple-
iphone-5-image-sensors-and-battery/)

~~~
nawitus
>How does this prediction jibe with the statement that a larger sensor will
always be beneficial, especially in low light?

Even though larger sensors will be beneficial, at some point the small sensor
will be good enoug for 99% of consumers, though professionals will still
prefer the larger sensor.

>Will smartphones be able to include much larger sensors in the future?

Perhaps, like Nokia pureview did - however that phone is slightly larger than
the average smartphone.

>Is there some new physics that obviates the need for a large sensor?

No, but technology will advance so that small sensors will be sufficiently
good to 99% of consumers. There's progress in sensor technology ever year.
There's also progress on the processor side, which has been/is apparently a
bottleneck, as new processors in DSLR cameras enable better image quality
(take for example DIGIC processors).

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pkteison
I'm really impressed by the timeline on the article. Appears to be implemented
with <https://github.com/athletics/infostory> ; anybody know if this was this
custom made just for Forbes, or even just for this article? Seems like a ton
of effort for a small detail, but it really enhanced the article for me.

Edit: Better googling yields this article which talks a little bit about the
timeline, so definitely not just for the article:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/lewisdvorkin/2012/09/13/inside-f...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/lewisdvorkin/2012/09/13/inside-
forbes-our-journey-from-website-to-platform-a-2-year-interactive-timeline/)

~~~
jellisnyc
Hi, I'm one of the partners at Athletics. We originally developed the timeline
custom for Forbes and have wanted to push this a bit further at some point,
hence the repo. Really glad you liked it.

Where credit's due: The Forbes team developed the GoPro feature using our
toolkit as a starting point. (We did the timeline in Lewis D'Vorkin's post
that you referenced.)

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morefranco
Awesome post - really interesting to see the evolution and how it was all
started without the help of sites like Kickstarter (seems like that's where
they would have started if the GoPro was about to come out today).

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farabove
GoPro's success is based on one thing, It does it's job very well.

