Slashdot Mirror
Foxconn Invests $200 Million In GoPro
MojoKid writes "The initial wearable cameras [GoPro founder Nick] Woodman created to capture action shots as they happened used 35mm film, but his company's cameras have evolved into highly durable, HD vid-cams that are sought after by amateurs and extreme sports stars alike. It turns out Foxconn digs what GoPro has designed as well. The giant Taiwanese manufacturer just bought a significant stake in Woodman Labs, making Nick Woodman a billionaire in the processes. Taiwan-headquartered electronics manufacturer Foxconn (also known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.), purchased an 8.88% stake in Woodman Labs for $200 million, valuing the San Mateo, Calif. company at $2.25 billion."
Foxconn will buy the rest of the company and accept a buyout offer from Microsoft.
Microsoft's Visual FoxPro cameras will become all the rage.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
GoPro cameras would probably make a good case study about not trying to put everything and the kitchen sink into a product. Instead, make it affordable and good for what it'll actually be used for.
Value is value. US dollars is simply one way of storing it. It just so happens that because you use dollars as your "reference" value that you think it has to be converted to those dollars to truly "count." If you were British you wouldn't think it really counted until it was in Pounds. If you lived New Vegas you wouldn't think it counted until it was in bottle caps.
You might say that value is simply based on what they decided, and that could change at any time. But that's true for every form of value storage, including dollars. It's just that when your reference storage medium changes value it's not as obvious, because you still have the same number of it.
Metro ruined my face
It's just that when your reference storage medium changes value it's not as obvious, because you still have the same number of it.
... and I doubt there has been a significant drop in gold production or need industrial use:
http://goldprice.org/gold-price-history.html#36_year_gold_price
So that means? =P
Value is value. US dollars is simply one way of storing it.
The difference is: One billion US dollars can quite easily be converted into other goods. One billion dollars "worth" of stock in a small-cap company cannot. Especially if you're and insider and thus prohibited from selling your stock in secret.
who is spending some time in Madagascar. I ordered 3 components on 3rd November, all marked in stock. 3 days later I am told that the camera will be available but a spare battery and bacpak will take 2-4 weeks. The camera is delivered on time. On 18 Dec I am told ''We wanted to let you know that your order will be slightly delayed. We expect to receive the items for shipment to you on Feb/05/2013.". I think that I need a new dictionary with a revised definition of slightly.
WARNING: do not get one of these things if you need it quickly.
Part of the reason for the pacpak is to control the camera. You are supposed be able to do this with an Android app; but that does not work properly.
My son also complains that the camera crashes and it has lost video footage that he has shot. Be careful of these things.
Foxconn buys $2.25b worth of IP for just 8.88c on the dollar.
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
No, don't read the retarded summary.
Foxconn invested 200 million in the company ... only in fantasy land does that value the company at billions. Even IF you give face value for stock (doesn't actually work that way in reality) then they'd still need to actually sell those stocks. They haven't.
Valuation != actual value. Its a fantasy number made up so people who don't understand stocks think the stock is worth more than it is.
Its not even public company. You can't just go buy stock in it. The valuation is just as much fantasy as Frodo and The One Ring.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
It's actually a very good product. The quality of the video produced, for the form factor and price point, is better than anything else I am aware of on the market. I've used a wide range of "action cameras" over the years, and the new GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition is the best of them.
Brought to you by the author of such childrens' classics as "Some Kittens can Fly!" and "All Dogs go to Hell."
No surprise FoxConn would invest - discreet wearable cameras are very popular items on the factory floor there.
'Your brain is God.' -- Dr. Timothy Leary
That valuation is way out of whack. I wouldn't cost anything close to $200M to develop an equivalent product at bring it to market.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
What I love about this news item is the odd investment amount 8.88%, Which only seems odd to our western eyes where 8 is not the most auspicious lucky number, like it is in certain Eastern cultures.
Value is value. US dollars is simply one way of storing it. (...) You might say that value is simply based on what they decided, and that could change at any time. But that's true for every form of value storage, including dollars.
Actually, currency -- or more precisely legal tender -- differs from other stores of value in that you use it to pay taxes. This ensures guaranteed demand for it, and this makes it a more proper yard stick when measuring value than gold, pig iron or Florida condos.
In light of this, also keep the difference between realized and unrealized gains and losses in mind. A store of value is worth what the next guy will pay for it when the next guy actually pays for it. Upon doing so, you can book the realized gain or loss (and pay the taxes where applicable). Until then, it's an unrealized gain or loss that sits on your balance sheet, and you're free to value the asset pretty much any way you fantasize. (Though admittedly, the taxman might pry into your accounts if you book nonsensical values.)
To be an actual billionaire, Woodman needs to find a pigeon who pulls out his checkbook.
It appears that Big Brother's ubiquitous eyes will be slanted. They'll be sending frames to china every time they get net.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
Aww, and GoPro was such a nice, successful company, too. Now I have no doubt they're going to have to outsource all R&D and production to Asia and everyone knows that with the lower expense of production, the quality will suffer too.
I won't be surprised in a year or less to see GoPro HD cams starting to fail for reasons they had never failed before. Yay, Capitalism!
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
Remember this one from January?
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/01/10/1619247/protecting-your-tablet-from-a-fall-from-space
The tablet was wrapped up in it's special case and it was dropped from 100,000ft (via a helium balloon). Also attached to it was a GoPro to film the whole thing. The GoPro was just in its own standard plastic case!
They're cool cameras, but maybe not so good in some situations.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It's a nice product created by a company that has had way to many gliches bringing newer products to market (noted in a couple of posts here and many posts on DVinfo.net and other boards).
If Foxcon can bring some expertise to GoPro, they may have a winner that can really push against the rising tide of competition. If not, the GoPro is going to get flushed by somebody who can actually write decent firmware.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Foxconn, the biggest consumer electronics manufacturer in the world and China's largest private employer, is a contract manufacturer. They have no product lines of their own. This puts them in the lowest margin part of the product food chain. Although Foxconn makes the iPhone, the iPad, the Wii, and the XBox, the companies who own the brand make much more per unit than Foxconn does. At the other end, the semiconductor manufacturers who make the more complex parts also make higher margins.
Foxconn doesn't intend to stay in that subservient position forever. The Economist had an article on them a few weeks ago pointing this out. Acquiring a product line to call their own is a first step. They've chosen one which doesn't compete with their major customers. For now.
Five years out, Foxconn may be a major consumer brand. Foxconn phones, Foxconn tablets, Foxconn stores...
So if I start a company with million shares and sell one of the shares to my mom for $1000, I will become a billionaire too? That was easy!
---------------------------
I got lost in space.
One billion dollars "worth" of stock in a small-cap company cannot.
If you have a billion dollars worth of stock then it's no longer small-cap by any standard I'd use, nor is the kind of stock that'd flop into nothing if the founder left. If Foxconn was willing to pay $200 million for a 8.8% share, I'm quite sure he could have sold his full share for $500+ million. Maybe he'd lose the coveted title of billionaire but for all intents and purposes he's filthy rich whether he'd cash out or not.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Value is value. US dollars is simply one way of storing it. It just so happens that because you use dollars as your "reference" value that you think it has to be converted to those dollars to truly "count." If you were British you wouldn't think it really counted until it was in Pounds. If you lived New Vegas you wouldn't think it counted until it was in bottle caps.
You might say that value is simply based on what they decided, and that could change at any time. But that's true for every form of value storage, including dollars. It's just that when your reference storage medium changes value it's not as obvious, because you still have the same number of it.
You can't buy a quater pounder with a "share" of stock.
You're confusing currency with money.
But that's not the point. Value is value, and saying someone doesn't "really" have a billion dollars in value just because *you* don't happen to like the form it's in is simply wrong.
I don't understand your point.
If I take all my dollars and buy shares of a company, I have the same value as before. Of course tomorrow that may be different. But that's also true if I *didn't* buy any shares. It's just not as easily measured. All things have value, and those value constantly change in relation to each other, but at any instant in time X number of Y has the same value as A number of B. It's extraordinarily useful to measure those values in terms of a currency, but that's only a convenience.
Suppose I took a million US dollars and decided I would buy British Pounds with it. As time goes on, let's say that the Pound has increased in value, so that my million is now worth 1.1M. It's still in British Pounds, so I haven't really "realized" the profit until I convert back to dollars? Why? If I were British I would think I already have it where it "really" counts. But that's just silly, its value is its value, no matter how it's stored.
And your theorietical reasoning would make sense if you lived in an ivory tower, oblivious to the world around you.
The sorry truth, however, is that you live in a very real community, and that community expects you to file taxes (in a currency) and pay taxes (in a currency). As much as I agree with your ideas in theory, the reality is that in such a context, tax laws and accounting trump whichever definition of value you and I might fantasize. You pay taxes in USD or Euros or whatever it is that your government expects where you live, and you book realized and unrealized gains and losses accordingly, value be damned.
That misses the point. How you pay taxes is far removed from the idea that everything is a form of value. Some are more convenient than others, some are more volatile than others, and some are more liquid than others, but they all "count." That is a foundational truth. Taxes and accounting comes much much later. There is no "ivory tower" involved.