360Fly Camera Boss Has A Pop Shot At GoPro, Says 360 Degree Video Capture Is Set TO Be Big.
Peter Adderton the CEO of fly 36 who is an Australian who established Boost Mobile said that his new 360-degree camera, that has only gone on sale at specialist stores in Australia at this stage, is already a smash hit at Best Buy in the USA, Best Buy happens to be the biggest seller of GoPro cameras in the world.
ChannelNews understands that JB Hi Fi and Harvey Norman will sell a new range of 360Fly cameras next year.
Adderton, predicts that GoPro is starting to ignore the consumer market with the launch of a $7,000+ 15 camera 360-degree rig for professionals who shoot video.
“They are starting to ignore the consumer market that made them famous” he said.
Adderton said that the recent move by YouTube and Facebook to deliver 360-player capability will not only drive demand for 360-degree video but educate millions of consumers on the capability that a 360-degree camera delivers.
He said that current users of GoPro cameras as well as several other brands of action camera are missing out on “a whole heap of image capture”.
Adderton who grew Boost Mobile with audacious marketing is passionate about where 360-degree cameras can go.
When asked whether he was already setting himself up as an acquisition target for the likes of GoPro who are cashed up and looking for new markets and due to the fact, that 360fly holds several valuable patents relating to 360-degree multiple camera technology and players, Adderton said “Could be, or it could be an Apple, Google or Facebook as the social networks are looking to expand into hardware”.
Adderton initially went to the U.S. with his Boost Mobile brand that partnered with enterprise-focused Nextel Communications to expand into the Gen-X youth market.
Adderton founded the Boost brand in Australia in 2000 before partnering with Nextel in 2002 to bring the “lifestyle-based telecommunications company” to the United States.
Boost Mobile’s success eventually led to Nextel buying out Adderton’s stake in the U.S. operations.
He then founded Agency 3.0, which targeted the digital media space, then earlier this year when 360fly closed out $17.8 million in Series B funding that included Qualcomm Ventures and lead investor Catterton, Adderton was head hunted to expand 360fly into global markets.
While the action-camera market is currently dominated by GoPro, Adderton thinks 360fly’s unique features can help it stand out in a crowded and growing market.
That feature set includes integration with smartphones that allows users to edit and post video content immediately after it’s recorded.
“People are consuming less and less video now, usually less than one minute chunks,” Adderton explained. “There’s a need to capture as much as you can in that one minute. With the 360-degree lens we can capture everything around you in that one minute. And, that ability to edit and share that content nearly instantaneously is a real game changer.”
In Australia the man behind 360fly is Nick Segger the former marketing manager of Nikon, he believes that 360fly will be a “big success” in Australia as both consumers and professionals realise what a 360-degree camera actually delivers.
Eden Creative a Sydney based production Company is due to shoot a professional video for a major brand using the new 360fly cameras that have nine lenses built into one lens.
360fly is an action camera that looks like an oversized golf ball, it’s lens is spherical, and points straight up into the air. The camera can capture everything happening around you all at once, the single eye recording everything in its field of view.
Users can stick the camera on a surfboard, on a bicycle helmet and record everything above and on all sides of the camera just like what a fly actually sees.
We recently trialled the camera and after downloading the app which is remarkably easy to set up we were able to view real-time images and then shoot images for instant viewing. At this stage you cannot shoot and view at the same time.
Within the 360fly app, you can edit your clips and publish them to Twitter, Facebook or the recently announced YouTube 360 viewer.
If you upload the content to the 360fly website using your computer, the site will automatically generate an embed code for you, so posting the scene to your own blog is as easy as embedding a YouTube clip, only viewers are given the ability to freely scroll through a scene in full 360 degrees, exploring virtually any point of view.
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