GoPro goes for drones

All indications suggest that GoPro, the company that popularized the so-called action cameras, is working on it own line of drones for the consumer market.

Drones, first brought to the consumer market by French company Parrot, China’s DJI, and US outfit 3D Robotics have become the tool of choice for mounting a GoPro camera: the most popular, like the DJI shown in the illustration, can cost between 500 and 1,000 dollars, and tend to come with mountings specially designed for the GoPro. The market for this kind of drones is expanding rapidly, and estimates suggest it will be worth around two billion dollars by 2020.

GoPro is a perfect example of a company that has been able to set the industry standard: its cameras, which have an infinity of accessories allowing them to be mounted on just about anything, are the bench mark for filming extreme sports, pretty much redefining this sub-segment.

Fed by spectacular marketing and with growing sales behind it, the company went public in June last year, valued at three billion dollars, and its shares, which debuted at 31 dollars, have at times reached 94 dollars. The resources the IPO has produced, along with expected Christmas sales of between 500 and 600 million dollars, the company’s move seems to be aimed at blocking drone makers from developing their own cameras, thus reducing customers’ incentive to buy a GoPro.

GoPro cameras cost between two hundred and four hundred dollars for the Hero series. This is a product that generates profits not just from sales of the camera itself, but for the myriad accessories such as its mountings, waterproof covers, suction pads, etc. In this context, a drone can be seen simply as another accessory, a place to mount your camera, except of course that a drone is going to cost rather more than the camera itself.

Alternatively, the company could take advantage of its dominant position in the market for this type of camera to cut a deal with drone manufacturers to guarantee the continued use and purchase of its cameras. But instead, it has preferred to take a more aggressive approach, competing directly with them in a fast-growing market characterized by falling prices. Today’s drones are much more than a miniature helicopter and a remote control handset, and now incorporate all kinds of sensors, accelerators, GPS, etc, giving them automatic stabilization, programmed navigation, and return to base when its batteries begin to run out. Videos taken from drones are attracting more and more attention, and the entry barriers to producing them are falling fast, putting their manufacture pretty much within reach of anybody.

GoPro’s entry into the drone market could boost the popularity of these devices still further, in the same way that its action cameras captured the public’s imagination. The question we now have to ask ourselves is whether we’re ready for a world where drones roam free…

(En español, aquí)