GoPro subscriber numbers shoot to 761,000 for the whole of 2020

In the third quarter of 2020, GoPro estimated that the best-case scenario for its paid subscriber count was that it would be driven to a maximum of 700,000 thanks to HERO9 Black sales, which include an attractive bundle with a subscription on its website. Now, however, its full report for the same year show this number has beaten this limit by 61,000.

GoPro's founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman attributes this success to the company's new "subscription-centric consumer-direct model", which mainly consists of streamlining its operations, marketing and sales so as to focus on gopro.com. In the main, this seems to have had positive effects: the site posted a 2020 revenue of US$283 million in total, or 79% of GoPro's total revenue for the year.

The action-cam firm has also reduced its operating costs to $351 milllion in 2020, or 15% compared to 2019 (according to generally-accepted accounting practices (GAAP)), and is now sitting on $328 million in cash and investments. However, it also posted a GAAP net loss of $67 million, or 4.46 times that of 2019, whereas its net income was $13 million, as opposed to $35 million in 2019.

Then again, GoPro seems to be forging ahead with many of the desired aims of its new direct-to-consumer model, which include a reduced inventory on hand (50% less what it was when 2020 began) and selling more premium-tier (with a price of US$300 or more). They represented 91% of the sales in the last quarter of 2020.

The GoPro HERO9 Black is also still available on Amazon