By Kyle Jennejohn

At the end of October 2016, GoPro released the GoPro Karma Quadcopter that includes the GoPro Hero 6 mounted onto it and is currently priced at $999.99—half of which is to pay for the Hero 6 that is included.

The drone goes approximately forty miles per hour while in sport mode and about thirty-five in its standard mode and is able to go about three thousand meters away from the controller. It weighs about thirty-five ounces and the standard stock battery that comes with it lasts about twenty minutes. Better yet, GoPro developed an app that is able paired with the Karma which gives the user a birds-eye-view of the flying drone.

Unfortunately, the launch of the drone was widely perceived to be awful and just a week later, GoPro had to recall massive amounts of the drones due to a bug in which drones would fall right out of the sky mid-flight. GoPro blames faulty engineering, but it begs the question—was the drone tested before it was released to the public?

With the drone sales falling short of the $472,000,000 revenue expectation, GoPro stopped production which cut nearly three hundred jobs, 20% of their workforce, by the end of November 2016. The failure of the Karma Quadcopter led GoPro to halt all production and get rid of future drone plans.

Since the revenue decline, GoPro has gone into full damage control, cutting prices on the Hero 5 and 6 in order to encourage the purchase of their products again. In order for this company to survive, they must start competing against other camera and drone companies, so this is a step in the right direction towards a brand revamp that will hopefully help them land on their feet once more.