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Gopro's Inability to Innovate


On February 29, 2016 Gopro investors are optimistic. Gopro announced the acquisition of two video editing apps, “Splice” and “Replay”, costing them a cool $105 million. The apps will allow users to immediately edit content on their phone, a dimension that Gopro has been struggling with. The question becomes, what about this acquisition makes the company worth $176,025,000 more as the markets have been showing today? It is definitely a promising software, but I seem to recall a time when Gopro said that they were going to make their own mobile video editing software.

During the Q2 2015 conference call in July, President Tony Bates stated, “We are now in the final phases of development and testing of a new mobile app that’ll allow users to seamlessly trim and share the best photo and video moments captured on a GoPro. We expect to launch this experience before the end of summer.”

In their Q3 earnings call in mid October, with the new software still unreleased, Nick Woodman stated, “While our new software platform is still in development I made a short video this weekend to demonstrate our progress.” Don’t worry though, Woodman ensures, they have a, “laser focus” on completing that software.

In their Q4 earnings call, again with the mobile software yet to be released, Woodman said, “…and an entirely new editing experience slated for release later this year will make it easy to create strikingly good edits in a matter of minutes…” The statement was made directly following the announcement that Gopro had cut 7% of its workforce and reallocated resources to software development. In Q1 2016, they finally caved in and made the aforementioned acquisition without ever releasing the software they had been so ‘laser focused’ on.

It is understandable that investors see the purchase as a positive, but it would seem investors have forgotten that this is just another example of Gopro’s inability to execute on innovation. First the botched Hero 4 Session launch, now the inability to develop software. Gopro promised to launch their new drone, ‘Karma’, in Q1 2016 and as of right now there has been no scheduled release date. Based on their historically poor performance on introducing new products to market and their inability to innovate, I believe that their drone 'Karma' will receive the typical Gopro treatment. That is to say investors high expectations will be met with underperformance. 


The failure of the company to execute on multiple aspects of their last two major projects raises a few red flag to say the least. If Gopro wants to be thought of as an innovator, they better figure out how to innovate.

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