GoPro Launches Developer Program | Fast Company | Business + Innovation.

A day after poaching a leading Apple designer—a move that sent its stock roaring up 19%—GoPro announced the public launch of its developer program.
The initiative, which was quietly rolled out with a few partners a year ago, is aimed at offering official support of third-party companies that want to build products with seamless GoPro integration.

GoPro clearly hopes a program like this will help kick-start its business prospects. Over the last year, its stock has plummeted from a high of $65.49 to a low of $9.01. In recent weeks, it’s been bouncing around between $11 and $14, hardly what investors had in mind when the leading action camera company went public in June 2014. In January, the company laid off about 100 people, or 7% of its workforce. Many have speculated that the poor stock performance over the last year has been due to poor sales of its Hero 4 Session camera.
Developers taking part in the new effort can take advantage of three types of integration.

First is having their mobile apps connect directly with GoPro cameras, bringing camera command and control, media management, and live video preview to those apps.

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Too little too late? GoPro were totally -not- interested in the maker world, developers and the people that could have kept them relevant, now they’re on the way out and trying to make some big moves. With Facebook live and 3-4 other big live players they need to move towards that quickly. GoPro previously said they’re going to make drones, challenging market.