A glimpse of SNAP’s future: GoPro realizes smartphones do exactly what its cameras do
In an interview with CNBC on Thursday, CEO Nick Woodman said the company had realized one crucial error it made since it went public in 2014.”We failed to make GoPro contemporary and failed to align GoPro to the smartphone movement,” Woodman said. “The smartphone has set a new bar for convenience” and for how much work consumers are willing to put into making video, he added.
Source: GoPro CEO Woodman says company failed to align to smartphone movement – Business Insider
Back in late 2015, we shared our view that GoPro (GPRO) was really a feature, not a product. As we said at the time, we saw Yelp (YELP), Angie’s List (ANGI), Groupon (GRPN) and others as features that over time will be incorporated into other products — like Facebook’s Professional Services, those at Amazon (AMZN) or others from Alphabet’s Google, much the way point-and-shoot cameras were overtaken by camera-enabled smartphones and personal information management functions were first incorporated into mobile phones and later smartphones, obviating the need for the original Palm Pilot and other pocket organizers.
It’s that same perspective that lead to our less than positive outlook on the Snap (SNAP) IPO.