GoPro Hero 5 release date, news: GoPro banking on Hero5 to save company? New action camera 'most convenient yet'

The long-awaited new action camera from GoPro, Inc., the GoPro Hero5, could be the product that saves GoPro from the financial slide it has been in since the previous year.

According to ValueWalk, a recent report from Longbow Research analyst Joe Wittine indicates that the forthcoming release of the GoPro Hero5 and the GoPro Karma drone just might make the company profitable once more and gain back the confidence of investors.

GoPro has been in a slump as of late. In 2015, the company had to give its Hero4 Session a major price cut. In January, it revealed that its sales had gone down by as much as 31 percent compared to the same period in the previous year.

Earlier this year, GoPro announced a major change to its action camera line-up, axing three of its cheapest cameras (the GoPro Hero, the Hero+, and the Hero+ LCD). Now, GoPro's entry-level camera is the $200 GoPro Hero4 Session. The current line-up also includes the Hero4 Silver and the Hero4 Black.

These changes, which were announced during the company's Q4 2015 conference call in February, were geared towards getting customers to buy new GoPros by limiting their choices.

"When you give consumers too many choices, you confuse them, and they may end up buying nothing," CEO Nick Woodman said at the time, as quoted by CNET.

The other big announcement made during the conference call was that the company will be releasing its next flagship action camera, the GoPro Hero5, later this year. Woodman said that the new camera will be GoPro's "most connected and convenient" yet.

"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," he said. "But we are self-aware and we're willing to acknowledge that experience is too difficult for the mass market consumer, today."

As rumors currently have it, the Hero5 will be a speedier and more versatile version of older action cameras in the GoPro Hero line. According to CNET, it will retail between $450 and $550, and will be smaller and lighter than older GoPros.

GoPro has not announced the official release date for the Hero5, though rumors place its release date later this year, possibly in October.