The Midday Report

This is an update to the coverage of three subjects previously featured on Business Unusual. Typically these businesses were hailed for their ability to disrupt the market they were in and it appeared at the time that good times lay ahead.

No business gets a free ride though and their success came at the cost of the previous incumbents. As they now move into the prime position it is others that are trying to disrupt them.

This is part 2.

GoPro

GoPro’s incredibly small, robust and high quality video cameras not only gave sportsmen the chance show off their heroics, they allowed services like YouTube to attract even more users with the high quality footage. They focused not just on improving their products but how people could use them and, while they were never cheap, the comparative cost to professional equipment made them popular even with the pros. Sales volumes were climbing but issues with production and their new killer product threatened to end their run at the top.

Since it was featured in September 2015, things were on the up and up for GoPro, but late last year the issue with getting enough of the new Hero 5s to market left them with lower sales over the all important festive season.

They also launched what could have been a game changer - a camera drone called Karma. Unfortunately GoPro, new to drones, had to match customer expectations compared with the market leader DJI. GoPro began getting reports of crashes from customers. The drone would simply fall from the sky for no reason. A recall followed which sent the share price the same way as the drones.

But like the sportsmen that use the cameras which know only too well that you will fall when you try to do amazing things, it appears GoPro may do the same.

They cut staff numbers and shut down their entertainment division. They relaunched a part of the failed drone, which had a removable handheld gimbal. That is now available as the Karma Grip.

They had been developing editing software to turn the incredible raw footage into a sleek production. Their efforts will see their Quik editing app included natively on Huawei’s smartphones. There are currently almost 20 million copies of the app on Android which given Huawei’s 100 million annual sales offer a new market for hosting and improving on video shot not on GoPros but any camera.

Now read part 3 - Bitcoin or part 1 - Uber