In news that might shock airsoft players around the world who are fans of the Contour High Definition Action Cameras, the company apparently has already closed doors last week and laying off 60 employees. This Seattle, Washington-based company was founded by two skiers and launched the business in 2004 and built the company with yearly sales of US$15 million as of 2011. It's a company that shows a lot of promise and amongst its competitors, appears to be the most innovative in terms of ease of use of its Contour HD products.

According to reports, especially from Geekwire and according to blogger Brier Dudley, Contour is apparently struggling against the leader, GoPro, and while its holding on its own strongly, the entry of big budget and big name companies such as Sony, Panasonic and JVC into the action camera market have just made their position untenable.

Thus, the decision appears to be sound fiscally and it seems that Contour has peered into the future, and it was bleak. So rather than fight it out with whatever resources it can throw to get a bigger pie of the action camera market, it would rather cut potential losses early on, rather than experiencing the big loss of market share and revenue when it finally happens.

Perhaps an even blunt assessment offered by Marc Barros, one of the co-founders of Contour can best describe the situation.

So far, there is no further news on plans of the board after stopping operations and laying off employees. The company still has assets and perhaps some intellectual property to leverage for a buyout from one of bigger competitors or from another company that may want its technology, like Google. If the co-founders want to see the company’s legacy continue in one way or another, they either reopen and fight it out or sell to the highest bidder.

In this case, making sure the legacy lives on means taking the second option if they don’t want to take losses.