GoPro promised something new – if you ask me, the timing is right for a new Karma drone

Next week, at NAB, GoPro is going to announce a new product line. There are a lot of rumors circulating, but one that would make more sense than you might think at first is that DJI will launch a drone.

Nearly everyone in the industry knows the "Why not" of this story: the truly catastrophic original GoPro Karma drone, but that was launched in 2016, and the world has moved on.

The biggest problem for the Karma, other than a tendency for the sample models to fall out of the sky, was the arrival of far better competition from DJI drones. But nowadays this is where things are looking up for GoPro – the US government is making life very difficult indeed for DJI, which is currently barred from seeking FCC approval for any new products.

The last few approved DJI products are sneaking their way out now, and then GoPro will find itself in a much less competitive landscape.

Ten years is a long time, too, and no doubt a lot of R&D has been going on at GoPro, which might make for a very interesting drone.

The GoPro Max 2, which I reviewed last year, shows the company has moved things a long way in the sphere of 360-degree cameras (a little pun there for the fans). The company is also working on putting cameras in other robust shells, as the acquisition of helmet camera firms suggests.

It's also true that most of the complaints – in so far as there are any – directed at GoPro Hero 13 Black are only about low light photography, which isn't much of a problem for aerial work, so there shouldn't be any worries about the kind of camera GoPro bring to the table.

GoPro has also added a gimbal, the Fluid Pro AI, to its repertoire in the last year, suggesting another key drone tech is in the bag.

Perhaps some of the innovative – but ultimately too complicated – ideas of the original Karma drone could be abandoned in favor of something more straightforward.

The design need not be so complicated, heavy & pricey this time. Forcing the buyer to acquire a gimbal and a GoPro Hero camera, even if it worked more reliably, gave people a lot of tools, but it also pushed prices up and made things difficult to use.

The 2016 product recall had, also, been dreadful timing in terms of the 2016 holiday sales market – the same time DJI was bringing out the foldable Mavic Pro and essentially creating the template for drones as we've known them for a decade.

GoPro has proven that it is able to acquire companies to get the tech it needs, before adding the final shine of usability and the company's well-liked subscription cloud service.

There are likely to be several opportunities around the world to collaborate for a company with a record of approaching things in this way. Ironically, one might even be – depending on how it is approached of course (lawyers would need to take a good look, not to mention the parties in question) the possibility of cooperation with DJI again.

Now, yes, things ended badly before – Karma's position as number 2 to DJI's top spot in the drone market was not enough to save the 250 team members GoPro laid off in early 2018, but things could be different.

DJI CEO Frank Wang and GoPro CEO Nick Woodman did talk together about working together about two years before Karma, and it was largely arrogance on Woodman's part that led to Karma being set up alone (or, rather, with the help of US drone startup 3D Robotics.

DJI had a decade of dominance, 3DR ended up making enterprise software, and the US government has stepped in to change the rules. Fair or not, now is definitely an opportunity GoPro could make the best of!

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