GoPro will soon be manufacturing drones.

SleepyC

www.AirHeadMedia.com
GoPro will soon be manufacturing drones. The Wall Street Journal reports that the company, known for its hugely popular line of action video cameras, will release consumer drones "late next year." GoPro's drones will be multi-rotor helicopters that carry high-definition cameras likely resembling those used in existing devices like the GoPro Hero series. According to the report, GoPro is aiming to price its consumer drones between $500 and $1,000, an aggressive range that could immediately shake up the consumer drone market.

Companies like DJI and Parrot have established an early foothold in that business, but GoPro's reputation and dominance of the action cam segment will likely put its future competitors on the defensive almost immediately. Some existing drones already support GoPro cameras, so it will be interesting to see if manufacturers change their strategy once they're competing directly against the company. We know GoPro can build quality cameras, so the bigger question is about the drone hardware itself. At this point, Parrot and DJI have both had multiple tries at building quality consumer drones. And the field will likely be even larger once GoPro's drones are ready. But in many ways, it's an obvious move; you can already take GoPro's cameras nearly anywhere. Now it sounds like the company wants to become the all-in-one solution for aerial photography.
 

MadMonkey

Bane of G10
Gut reaction is that it will be crap... but... if it's something usable with GoPro durability, count me in.
 

Pumpkinguy

Member
I'm sure gopro is big enough to just buy DJI with all its patents. That would be the best move. My experience with gopro has been their customer service is top notch. They answer the phone! Wow what a revelation.
 


Rotorfreek

Member
I'm sure gopro is big enough to just buy DJI with all its patents. That would be the best move. My experience with gopro has been their customer service is top notch. They answer the phone! Wow what a revelation.
Not so sure about that... DJI has more than double the full time employees that Go Pro do - not sure how profitable DJI are by comparison though.

Sent by my thumb, a trusty slave to my crazy mind. The above is the ramblings of a lunatic, and should be treated as such. Terms and conditions apply.
 

Old Man

Active Member
It all comes down to sales volume. Go Pro has a much wider and diverse world market than DJI ever will, and Go Pro has not yet developed a reputation of horrid customer service. The multirotor market, regardless of how it's packaged, is actually pretty narrow in scope and customer quantity. All the advertising hype makes it appear about 20 times larger than it really is.
 

gangle

Member
If DJI has bad service, that's a true deal killer as far as I'm concerned. I'm on the Inspire 1 track at the moment. What's put me off is the lack of redundancy in a Quad and tales of DJI service nightmares.

I've had extreme opposite experience with Horizon Hobby recently!
 

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