Hunter Dunlap // Co-Editor in Chief
In September 2004, the GoPro was one of the only solutions to filming our everyday lives. Typically, you would save them in a local file and share them with your close friends and family. When the iPhone was demonstrated on June 2007, the camera was poor and its scope of influence unknown. Little did we know, the iPhone, or just the smartphone in general, would grow to take the place of many common household items before it. These uses range from a GPS navigator, portable music device, calculator, compass, internet browser, and now what Go-Pro is learning, a high quality video recorder.
On September 28th, 2017, GoPro released their newest device, the hero 6. The hero 6 can capture videos at 4K resolution and in 60 FPS. While this is impressive, the newest Apple iPhone can also shoot pictures with the same quality. At a price of $500, the Hero 6 seems limited in its abilities in comparison to smartphones. Still, the GoPro comes with many nice accessories that allow you to share your recorded life like never before. While it is difficult to record yourself mountain biking, surfing, or skiing with a smartphone, the process is much easier on a GoPro, even if the quality of the video would be close to identical on the smartphone. Still, it is hard to say whether or not this is enough to entice customers to spend $500.
GoPro also introduced an entirely new camera called Fusion. Fusion is GoPro’s late in the game attempt to get into the 360 degree spherical camera market. This new device will have a feature called OverCapture which allows the user to capture every angle of a shot at once and then choose which perspective fits the best. This may seem a little bit overboard but imagine skiing down a mountain with the ability to see all of your friends, the view behind you, the sky above, that deer on the path, and everything else. You wouldn’t miss a moment. Still, new technology comes with a price and the Fusion comes at $700, or basically a new smartphone.
Analysts show optimism with GoPro leaving guidance slightly above their expectations in the third quarter. Although GoPro has had some difficulties releasing new products, CEO Nick Woodman has stated confidence saying “this year we got it right”. The market will be the deciding factor on GoPro and its utility versus ever encroaching smartphone.
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