GoPro News: GoPro To Discontinue 3 Cameras, Release Hero5 In 2016
2015 was not a good year for GoPro.
The company experienced a fall in share price, its Hero4 Session had to be given a price cut, and its product line seemed to confuse - rather than excite - consumers. Though an estimated 85 percent of consumers looking to buy an action camera still go for a GoPro, the company revealed in January that its sales have gone down by as much as 31 percent compared to the same period in 2015.
To rectify this, CEO Nick Woodman has announced several changes to the company's action camera lineup for 2016.
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First, GoPro is axing three of its cheaper cameras: the GoPro Hero, the Hero+, and the Hero+ LCD.
"When you give consumers too many choices, you confuse them, and they may end up buying nothing," Woodman said of the move.
According to Woodman, the company will discontinue production on these three cameras by April.
Three GoPro cameras will remain available. The GoPro Hero4 Session, now priced at $200 after the company halved its original price due to poor sales, will now take the place of the Hero as the company's entry-level camera. According to CNET, sales of the Hero4 Session increased threefold after its price was lowered. Now, GoPro has shipped more than half a million units of the Hero4 Session all over the world. The Hero4 Silver and the Hero4 Black will also remain on the GoPro product catalog.
The next big announcement from GoPro is that it will be releasing its next flagship camera, the GoPro Hero5, later this year. According to Woodman, the new action camera will be the company's "most connected and convenient" yet.
The GoPro CEO explained what this means, saying:
"GoPro as we have known it today has resonated with our core customer, who wants the solution so badly that they are willing to deal with the inconvenience of manually offloading and accessing and editing their content. But we are self-aware and we're willing to acknowledge that experience is too difficult for the mass market consumer, today."
In addition, Woodman also confirmed that the GoPro Karma drone and the GoPro Omni virtual reality camera rig will be released in the summer.
