The market is saturated. Everyone who wants a GoPro has one. They could come out with a MFT version with interchangeable lenses and get all of us. But consumers in general? Doubtful.

Supposedly the Hero 5 will be using the Ambarella H1 SOC which has both a 4K30P 10 bit HEVC pipeline and 4K60P 8 bit H.264 recording mode. This could potentially leave GoPro vulnerable to a Chinese manufacturer releasing a camera at the same or lower cost with the better spec H2 chip that does even higher frame rates in 4K. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Rumors indicate the Hero 5 will be released earlier (this summer now) in an attempt to help placate wallstreet.

Smart phone cameras have come a long way in the last few years, this also eats into GoPro sales.

@kurth

It has nothing to do with GoPro, we have separate topic about it.

http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/13286/imaginevision-4k-m43-drone-camera#Item_42

also has nothing to do with gopro !

Calm down, it was answer to post.

perfectly calm, but that topic was on their first camera.

It was, but last post was about item you referenced, with same video. Title actually do not have any specific camera model, just 4K and manufacturer, both fit.

@eatstoomuchjam

I added citation.

It is very good read for Japanese guys. GoPro also told everyone that action cameras are the future and no one can compete with them. Wrong on both points.

Not so bad in big scale.

While overall demand for action cams may have shrunk, the real issue for GoPro is that in a two-year period they did nothing to innovate. The Hero 5 adds nothing in terms of video quality over the Hero 4 - no stabilization in 4K, no 4K 60P, no HEVC. The video/audio quality is exactly the same (including the same bad low-light performance and lousy audio) as the former model, except, following Apple, there is no longer a standard analog mic input. After two years! Basically they added 4K to the Hero 4 Silver. So, no one who bought an older GoPro has any compelling reason to buy the new model. In the meantime there are from-nowhere Chinese firms making cameras just as good as the GoPro (no better unfortunately) that are cheaper.

Is this true of other manufacturers? No, Sony's action cam added an amazing feature - BOSS stabilization in 4K and 1080 120p. They also fixed design and menu shortcomings. No 4K60p, but still a model arguably worth upgrading to.

I think you are correct. But innovation should have been more than waiting for someone else to improve the chip - interchangeable lenses, power zoom, optical stabilization, an iris, something we can't think of. Basically, they acted like any Chinese knock-off manufacturer just buying parts. They spent all their R&D efforts on the drone, which turned out to be behind the technology frontier. Another Flip camera company?

My bet is that Ambarella could not solve the overheating problem that plagues all really small cameras even at 4K30p - GoPro Hero 4 Black, Sony X3000 and X1000, Kodak 360 4K, Samsung Gear 360, Sony RX100 IV and V, etc., not to mention some big cell phones...And, there is the issue of the storage media for 4K60p, or the necessity of going to HEVC, which appears to be problematical.

No manufacturer makes all the parts of a complex electronic device, or car or whatever. GoPro is like a knock-off not because they use parts made by others but because they didn't innovate - they just copied (themselves) and lowered the price, just like knock-off manufacturers do. Apple tries to innovate (style and function), though they have not been doing very well lately at that. Sony innovates in cameras, a lot, whatever one may think of their image quality or menu ease or their strategic feature restrictions across models. Panasonic too is innovating, or at least adding features that are important (IBIS), if not cutting edge. The GH4 was a breakthrough camera, And the GH5... Unfortunately, quality and innovation do not always succeed - Samsung cameras, for example. In a centrally planned, socialist country maybe that exit wouldn't have happened...