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How GoPro lost the drone opportunity will always amaze me. Especially given the potential military applications and contracts they could had signed. Is there

How GoPro lost the drone opportunity will always amaze me. Especially given the potential military applications and contracts they could had signed. Is there any serious competitor to DJI these days?

wintogreen74 4y ago
GoPro had no real advantage in the drone world; they made/make a cheap, good-enough quality camera for a pretty selective use-case. As a layperson it would look significantly easier to catch up in the optics vs autonomous & semi-auto vehicle platform. GoPro's drone was never more than a toy.
- Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
  If I'm understanding your comment correctly, GoPro made a drone that lacked all the features you'd expect in a modern drone and tried to sell it on brand recognition alone?
  - phonon 4y ago
    https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/15/14922328/gopro-karma-drone-review https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/15/14922328/gopro-karma-dron...
  - tesseract 4y ago
    It also infamously had an issue where the battery would loosen and become disconnected during flight, rapidly followed by the drone falling out of the sky.
- whatever1 4y ago
  In the mid 2010’s GoPro had a huge mind share among content creators and was multibillion company. They could easily buy a drone startup to get the necessary talent.
- BizarroLand 4y ago
  GoPros came by default on the 3DR Solo drone, which was used in a few Michael Bay films like the teenage mutant ninja turtles movie. However, DJI had a lighter drone with more battery life and flight time and much better software and competed hard, getting to the point where 3DR left the consumer drone space entirely and abandoned the 3DR solo. If you want to get into drones cheaply, you can usually get a 3DR solo for a few hundred bucks and install OpenSolo4 on it, which will make it work again.
didntknowya 4y ago
GoPro was never a serious contender for the drone game as much as any other player like Sony/Olympus/Nikon/Canon etc. DJI was already making a name for themselves in the camera industry with their gimbals. they moved their stabilization tech into drones (often to support gopro or third party camera attachments) and only realized later that they could easily cannibalize the camera makers
- rasz 4y ago
  And now they are moving into serious camera business https://www.dji.com/ronin-4d https://www.dji.com/ronin-4d

How GoPro lost the drone opportunity will always amaze me. Especially given the potential military applications and contracts they could had signed. Is there any serious competitor to DJI these days?

wintogreen74 4y ago

GoPro had no real advantage in the drone world; they made/make a cheap, good-enough quality camera for a pretty selective use-case. As a layperson it would look significantly easier to catch up in the optics vs autonomous & semi-auto vehicle platform. GoPro's drone was never more than a toy.

Sohcahtoa82 4y ago
If I'm understanding your comment correctly, GoPro made a drone that lacked all the features you'd expect in a modern drone and tried to sell it on brand recognition alone?
- phonon 4y ago
  https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/15/14922328/gopro-karma-drone-review https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/15/14922328/gopro-karma-dron...
- tesseract 4y ago
  It also infamously had an issue where the battery would loosen and become disconnected during flight, rapidly followed by the drone falling out of the sky.
whatever1 4y ago
In the mid 2010’s GoPro had a huge mind share among content creators and was multibillion company. They could easily buy a drone startup to get the necessary talent.
BizarroLand 4y ago
GoPros came by default on the 3DR Solo drone, which was used in a few Michael Bay films like the teenage mutant ninja turtles movie. However, DJI had a lighter drone with more battery life and flight time and much better software and competed hard, getting to the point where 3DR left the consumer drone space entirely and abandoned the 3DR solo. If you want to get into drones cheaply, you can usually get a 3DR solo for a few hundred bucks and install OpenSolo4 on it, which will make it work again.

didntknowya 4y ago

GoPro was never a serious contender for the drone game as much as any other player like Sony/Olympus/Nikon/Canon etc. DJI was already making a name for themselves in the camera industry with their gimbals. they moved their stabilization tech into drones (often to support gopro or third party camera attachments) and only realized later that they could easily cannibalize the camera makers

rasz 4y ago
And now they are moving into serious camera business https://www.dji.com/ronin-4d https://www.dji.com/ronin-4d