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GoPro shares dove Tuesday after Apple received a slew of patents, including one suggesting it could get into the sports camera business.
Included among several patents granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to Apple Monday, one is for a wearable camera that could compete with a certain high-definition camera maker that just went public last year.
Shares of GoPro GPRO sunk more than 12%.
Apple’s patent application, filed in March 2012, says the camera can be mounted on bikes or scuba masks, and will take pictures and record sounds under water. It can be operated remotely, says the application, which references the GoPro HD Hero2 digital camera.
However, notes the application, the HD Hero2 camera includes only a single image capture system, which captures images from the front of the camera, making it more susceptible to damage and wind resistance.
“Thus, there remains a need to provide a digital camera that can be used in a “conventional” capture mode, where the digital camera is held by the user while capturing digital images, and which can also be used in “streamlined” mounted mode,” reads the application.
The Tuesday drop in GoPro stock is part of a broader decline since early October, when it reached a 6-month high of $93.85. GoPro shares ended at $49.81.
Apple was also granted a patent for a “three dimensional user interface session control” — in other words, a system that would allow users to interact with a computer without touching a screen. Such an interface has been a popular means of computing in movies about the future. But for now, computer users remain have remained tethered to the touch screen or even a keyboard/mouse.
