Just as the first states were due to close their polling stations for the US election today, action-camera-maker GoPro announced that it was issuing a recall for its new Karma drone, which has only been on the market a few weeks.
Last week, GoPro’s stock plummeted after news came out that the company had not managed to clear out old inventory of its products from its sales partners, and generated roughly half as much revenue in the third quarter of 2016 as it had in the same quarter a year earlier. By publication, GoPro’s stock dropped again by about 8% in after-hours trading, to roughly $10.00—slightly above where it was after last week’s news.
As Quartz previously reported, GoPro had a rough 2016, with diminishing sales, underwhelming reviews of its newest camera, the Hero4 Session, and a half-year delay of the release of its Karma drone. Karma was meant to be one of the products that kickstarted the company’s year, and determined its fortunes for the future.
GoPro finally announced new cameras, and availability for its drone, in September. But early reviews of the drone have been mixed, and it seems there’s a fairly serious issue with some of the devices that have been shipped.
“The recall was announced after GoPro discovered that in a very small number of cases, Karma units lost power during operation,” GoPro said in a release. The recall is for 2,500 drones—it’s not clear whether this accounts for the entirety of the drones GoPro has shipped so far, nor has the company offered an explanation for the underlying issue causing some of them to lose power while flying. GoPro wasn’t immediately available to comment.
Image by Paintimpact on Flickr, licensed under CC-BY-2.0.