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Chinese electronics company Xiaomi is considering an offer to buy action-cam makers GoPro, according to a report in The Information. This news follows GoPro’s January announcement that it would be exiting the market for drones in order to streamline business and become more profitable. At the same time, CEO Nick Woodman said in an interview with CNBC the company was open to a buy-out:
If there are opportunities for us to unite with a bigger parent company to scale GoPro even bigger, that is something that we would look at.
Details on the potential offer are sparse at this point in time, but the deal could be worth as much as $ 1 billion. Once valued at more than $ 10 billion, in its heyday GoPro was a success story in consumer electronics, but the company’s market capitalization has since fallen to about $ 761 million, mainly due to aggressive competition from China.
According to analysts, a buyer could leverage GoPro’s brand and make profits through device sales. Xiaomi in particular could also use some of GoPro’s camera IP in the development of camera modules for its smartphones. That said, if the Chinese company does end up buying GoPro, we hope they won’t just use the brand name and patents, and will let GoPro action-cams live on.
GoPro’s stock price has spiked 8.8 percent on the news.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)