GoPro expects drone regulations to be eased

By Yoon Sung-won

GoPro expects that governments worldwide will ease rules of drone flights, which will ultimately benefit its camera and drone sales, a senior employee of the world’s top action camera maker said Monday.

“Countries worldwide will amend regulations on drones,” said Jeff Brown, senior vice president of GoPro’s communication division, during a press conference in Seoul, Monday. “Policy issues are very important to us and it is not just in Korea. We are looking into policies in Washington, Brussels and Asian countries.”

Showcasing its new action cameras and its first video-recording drone in Korea, GoPro stressed that it is pushing to protect the right to fly drones.

“We are working very closely with drone manufacturers such as DJI and Parrot, to organize an association to protect the rights of individuals who fly drones,” he said. “We are also promoting basic rules of flying drones for our customers. For instance, recreational drones cannot fly higher than 400 feet. They also cannot fly over no-fly zones such as those near airports and military installations.”

Brown also stressed that the company will make investments and develop human resources to boost its presence in the Korean market, which he said is key to the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region.

“In the APAC market, Korea is expected to provide us with particularly huge opportunities and we will make investments and send human resources here to tap into such opportunities,” he said.

Established in 2002, the California-based company has focused on manufacturing action cameras as well as compatible mobile applications and video-editing software. In 2014, the company opened its first overseas branch in Germany. It currently generates about 52 percent of its sales from outside of the North American market.

“In 2016, we are run by about 1,500 employees who have so far sold over 22 million cameras globally,” Brown said. “We are making some 10 percent of our total revenue from the APAC region and we aim at boosting it.”

GoPro showcased the Karma, its first video-recording drone, together with the new Hero 5 multipurpose action camera series.

Karma has a foldable design and can be carried in a backpack. It also comes with a detachable gimbal stabilization system providing a handheld grip, to produce stable and clear videos.

The company said both the Hero 5 Black and smaller Hero 5 Session can be set to automatically upload recorded videos to the GoPro Plus cloud storage service while it is being charged.

Lee Soo-hun, an official with GoPro, said the cloud service will open first in the United States next month and will be available in the Asian markets soon.

The new action cameras support voice recognition to recognize verbal orders from users in seven languages including English, Chinese and Japanese. It does not recognize Korean yet, but GoPro said it plans to update the firmware for Korean support by January.

In particular, the flagship Hero 5 Black has a 2-inch touch display and is waterproof, operable up to 10 meters underwater, even without extra housing.

“We have pushed to upgrade the Hero action cameras to be more easy to use, more durable and have stronger waterproof capability, provide better connectivity as well as high-quality captured images,” Lee said.