Snowboarding season is starting late for me this year. But that doesn’t mean it will be any less epic. So far this season Jackson Hole has had 221″ of snow.
This year I’m introducing a GoPro gimbal stabilizer into the mix. Here is a good example video of the difference a stabilizer makes – buttery smooth video footage. I am a big nerd when it comes to gear and tech, and I guess many other things as well.
But judging by GoPro’s stock right now and the cliff it fell off of at the beginning of this month, I may be in the minority when it comes to worrying about buttery smooth snowboarding videos.
Sales over the holiday season were disappointing and they recently announced that they’re discontinuing the Karma drone. GoPro is now said to be shopping for a buyer.
Part of the problem may be their narrow action sports use case. When I’m on a mountain, I love my GoPro gear. But when I’m not snowboarding, I struggle to find consistent value in it. We all just use our phones to capture photo and video.
To make matters worse, class action litigation was recently filed against GoPro, and the company’s CEO and CFO. Investors are claiming that they failed to disclose, among other things, that demand for the GoPro brand had declined dramatically.
Who do you think would be a good buyer for GoPro?
The new GoPro HERO6 is a miraculous little camera.
It now films in 4k at 60 frames per second. It has great image stabilization. And the screen on the back is new for me and a real game changer. The creative possibilities are endless.
But probably more importantly you can tell that GoPro is investing heavily in their software. They have to make it easier for people to share the content they create.
They also know that their survival likely depends on some sort of software layer.
At its peak, GoPro was trading at $86 per share. Right now, as I write this post, it’s $9.40. Some think the company will be sold within the next year.
Here is a recent quote from Benedict Evans:
As we saw with first GoPro and now perhaps Sonos, if you’re riding the smartphone supply chain cornucopia but can’t construct a story further up the stack, around cloud, software, ecosystem or network effects, you’re just another commodity widget maker.
I generally dislike derivative city monikers – such as the title of this blog post. But I appreciate that it quickly gets the point across.
Fusion recently published an interesting article talking about how Shenzhen, China is quickly rising as the hardware innovation capital of the world. Rather than simply serve as the place of production for companies such as Apple, the Chinese government would like to see it serve as a place of creation. In fact, some organizations are suggesting a terminology change from “Made in China” to “Created in China.”
A big part of the reason for all of this is that Silicon Valley long ago moved “up the stack.” It focused itself on software and internet services, because hardware wasn’t where the margins were. It wasn’t sexy. And so production got moved over to a low cost market. But now, with the rise of IoT, drones, and many other physical products, one could argue that Shenzhen has become highly relevant in the innovation ecosystem.
It’s also important to think about how Shenzhen fits in to the larger Pearl River Delta region. Here is an excerpt from the Fusion article: