GoPro is preparing for its IPO which will make Nick Woodman and his investors (including Foxconn in China) a nice chunk of change. Engadget has done a neat little write up on the potential for future growth in the company. They say that while cameras will always be part of the product line, more and more GoPro is shifting into a media company and that’s because the company is nearing the potential limits of its reach in the camera market. According to the article, they sold “just shy of 4 million GoPros last year, a number up from 2.3 million in 2012, and 1.1 million in 2011.”

So they’re selling potential investors on a bright and sunny future for the camera maker in the media space taking all those videos created by you, the users, and monetising them somehow… Either through social scoring, channels, TV programming deals or some other mechanism.

I can’t think of another company that has made a shift like this work but by the same token, most other companies have a vested interest in pushing a product through the content created and compromising the quality to do it, these guys don’t. They don’t care so much on the content of the clip but rather that is was filmed on the right setup… Theirs. And that allows freedom to create way beyond what would normally exist in a branded space. So maybe it can work?

You can check out the Engadget article here – it’s a great read.