It's no secret that the launch of GoPro's Karma drone didn't exactly go to plan, with the company quickly recalling thousands of the highly anticipated aircraft due to a few instances of power failure. The company is now looking to jump back on the flying horse, announcing plans to re-release the drone later in the year.
The action camera company is showing off its Karma drone at CES this week, which does seem a bit odd considering it was pulled from the market in November after a number of them tumbled from the sky mid-flight. There are more than a few unnerving examples of this floating around on YouTube.
The company tried to steady the ship with the separate launch of the Karma Grip, a stabilizer that Karma owners could detach from their drone and use as a handheld camera stabilizer for their GoPro, though the drone itself has remained off limits.
But GoPro isn't ready to write off its foray in camera drones as a complete failure just yet. It says it has pinpointed the source of the problem: a mechanical issue relating to how the drone's battery is secured. It is now carrying out testing and will give another update in February, ahead of a global relaunch later in the year.
Source: GoPro
Given that they can't make it smaller (with the obvious comparison to the Mavic), they would need a much longer flight time and more sophisticated controls/ object avoidance.
Ideally, it would also be cheaper (or at least a big re-launch discount).
I think most of that will be difficult to achieve, so I predict a disappointing second effort before it quietly disappears from the market.
They should abandon drones entirely, beef up their camera goodness, and *partner* with DJI instead - better to have 2 experts in their fields *collaborating*, than have one expert playing wannabee catchup in stuff they're not good at...