Today, specialist camera manufacturer GoPro announced their second quarter earnings, showing a 72% increase in revenue to $420 million and putting the company into profit. The company specialise in tough cameras able to go anywhere and produce high-quality video; the cameras have reached a consumer-friendly price and this is clearly helping the business. However, in addition to announcing a profit, GoPro president, Tony Bates, also revealed that the business is currently preparing a new mobile application designed to allow users to edit and ultimately share content from their GoPro camera direct from their smartphones. The application is still being tested but is expected to be launched after the summer holiday season.
Once released, this should make life considerably easier for those GoPro customers out and about rather than heading back to base to use a desktop or laptop computer in order to condense and publish their camera footage. It’s clear that there is much demand for a mobile GoPro studio-type of application as there are several startup businesses also attempting a similar service. The new application will sit alongside GoPro’s recently launched Hero+LCD, which contains onboard video editing software – and may render the Hero+LCD as obsolete before too long, depending on how successful the mobile application is.
At this juncture, we don’t know what platforms the GoPro application will be available on and how well it will connect with existing cloud based media storage systems such as Google Photos and Dropbox. It is reasonable to expect the GoPro software to be available on Android and iOS and it’s also possible that the company will optimize the version for Android tablets, better able to utilize the larger screen and in some cases, more powerful processor. However, whilst the mobile application is welcome, GoPro’s Chief Executive Officer, Nick Woodman, said back in June that GoPro are preparing a cloud based video editing product, which when released could make the mobile application obsolete. For now we do not know how far development has progressed into the new cloud-based system other than Nick’s comments that GoPro would like this service to create condensed highlight movies from camera footage with little user involvement. It’s possible that the as-yet-unreleased mobile application will have a considerable shelf life yet.