The company was founded by Nick Woodman in 2002. He was motivated by a 2002 surfing trip to Australia in which he was hoping to capture quality action photos, but could not because amateur photographers could not get close enough or buy quality equipment at reasonable prices. His desire for a camera system that could capture the professional angles inspired the 'GoPro' name.
Shortly after introducing the Karma drone in October 2016, GoPro recalled it because of in-flight battery problems that caused it to lose power in flight and crash. GoPro said it fixed the problem and re-released the drone.
The impact on sales was “significant,” Woodman said.
“Unfortunately, all of those retailers understandably felt inclined to remove GoPro from their promotions,” he acknowledged. “We could not get them enough inventory to warrant the spend that they were going to make.”
GoPro CEO Nick Woodman has announced several countermeasures following further bad news on business development.
- The action camera manufacturer from the USA ends the experiment with its Drone Karma, which has to fight with weak battery power, technical problems and strong competition from China.
- GoPro cuts over 250 jobs, which is one-fifth of the entire workforce.
- A business partner should help to stop the decline of the former successful company. “If there are opportunities for us to unite with a bigger parent company to scale GoPro even bigger, that is something that we would look at,“ said GoPro CEO Nick Woodman to CNBC.
There is already a stablished company in the market that sells drones with high definition cameras. The Phantom is a series of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) developed by Chinese technology company DJI. It's a big risk for a company like gopro to compete in the drone market. Because DJI Phantom drones are highly favored in that kind of category. Actually it's a very good move for gopro to join the drone competition.
Way back 2016, when the news came out that gopro will be making a drone. I was so excited to read the news because I love the company. I said to myself, Yes, finally GoPro will be making drones. If only they fully furnished the prototype with a series of tests before releasing it on the market. It would be a huge success for their drone business. But that's not the case. They've released it prematurely without trial and error. And it cause them a lot. They've tried to save the drone karma but its already to late. They have cut jobs because of this crisis.
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