According to TechCrunch, GoPro is laying off 200-300 employees this week, mostly from the division of the company that works on the Karma drone.A letter was reportedly sent to these employees this week which stated that the company is restructuring “to better align our resources with business requirements,” though the employees will remain on Payroll until the middle of February.This would be the fourth round of layoffs at GoPro since 2016.
After facing a dull financial year in 2016, GoPro has recovered moderately in 2017.The California company recorded its first profitable quarter in two years, and previous rounds of layoffs and restructuring seemed to have benefited the company. The company reported a 34% jump in revenue in late 2017 after losing $373 million in 2016, causing the stock to surge over 20%. While the company has still not released the information about how well the Hero 6 Black performed during the holiday season, GoPro’s newest camera initially sold well and impressed reviewers following its fall release.
The performance and the reception of the Karma, GoPro’s first drone, worried and troubled the company throughout 2017. GoPro Karma released in October 2016 and was recalled just weeks later because of some problems in the battery connector that caused some drones to fall from the sky. The company fixed the problem and put the drones back on store shelves following February, but Karma struggled to compete in a market dominated by Chinese drone-maker DJI and its popular drones such as Spark, Mavic Pro, and Phantom.DJI has a dominant consumer drone market share of about 70%.
Let’s see that whether this layoff and this latest attempt at refocusing GoPro on its core profitable businesses will bring any improvements in the revenues and profitability of GoPro. It will be interesting to see that what will be GoPro’s approach and plan to increase its sales and profitability and whether they will launch any new products or stick to their traditional action camera’s in the coming future.
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