Action camera maker GoPro is entering the drone market "a little bit too late," Piper Jaffray analyst Erinn Murphy said Friday, a day after the company reported that quarterly sales plunged about 50 percent from the previous year.
GoPro, which had pushed back the release of its drone camera, is looking to launch it later this year and sees it as a possible catalyst for growth.
"While we had to make the difficult decision to delay our drone, Karma, the upside is that Karma's launch should now benefit from the holidays," GoPro founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman said in a statement.
Share prices of GoPro tumbled 10 percent in Friday's premarket. They are down more than 77 percent over the last year.
Piper Jaffray is concerned about the launch timing due to competitive pressure that has been building.
"The category has been on fire for a few years," Murphy told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "What you're really seeing in earnest since the beginning of this year is price competition, which is something that GoPro has felt in its core action camera market."
If GoPro's drone falls flat it could raise significant concerns about the company's growth.
According to Murphy, GoPro appears to have hit a wall in terms of the addressable market for its action cameras. She added that GoPro's attempts to monetize content recorded on those cameras have been stymied as consumers increasingly rely on their smartphones to shoot, edit and share video on social media.