On June 1, GoPro filed a regulatory notice disclosing "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue." The culprit? A deadly combination of increased competition, plummeting sales and soaring memory prices. It seems scarcely believable that the firm that essentially invented the action camera should be struggling, but there's been a long road to get to this point.
GoPro's origin story is almost comically Californian. Founder Nick Woodman started the company in 2002 with a loan from his parents and a surfer's frustration at not being able to capture what he was doing out on the waves.
Woodman's first product was a wrist strap designed to hold a camera, but by 2004 he was selling his own branded cameras, designed specifically for action sports photography. In 2012, GoPro accounted for more than a fifth of all digital camcorders sold in the US. A year later, Woodman would become a billionaire.
