It’s in a hole, and it wants to climb out. GoPro has had a tough time of it lately, with falling profits, job cuts, pricing missteps, and the halving of its product line-up causing many observers to wonder exactly what the next year has in store for the action-camera maker.
As part of a strategy to boost the company’s fortunes, GoPro is overhauling its design unit, on Wednesday announcing the recruitment of a core member of Apple’s industrial design team. The move caused such a stir that GoPro’s share price jumped by 20 percent.
Danny Coster worked under the guidance of Apple design guru Jony Ive for more than 20 years, contributing to a range of products from iMacs to iPhones to iPads.
The new recruit, in his post as VP of design, will influence all aspects of design within the firm, “including hardware and software and services, lending his strategic vision and expertise to maximizing the GoPro user’s experience from end to end,” the company said in a release.
GoPro CEO Nick Woodman said the company felt “energized” to have New Zealand-born Coster on board, while the man himself said he was “excited” to have the opportunity to shape GoPro’s future.
GoPro appears to have done pretty well in luring Coster from Jony Ive’s famously close-knit team – the tech giant’s design chief said in an interview last year that only two designers had left his team since 2000, and one of those was due to illness.
Near-term plans for GoPro include the launch some time this year of its first-ever quadcopter, a move geared toward broadening its revenue possibilities. Woodman said in February that it’s also keen “to develop software solutions that make it easier for customers to offload, access and edit their GoPro content.” Coster will no doubt have a hand in both projects when he starts work at GoPro at the end of this month.
