It seems the domination of DJI in the camera drone space has taken another victom with gorpo cutting 200-300 jobs in their aerial division.
A few months ago eHang also gave up trying to compete against DJI in the consumer drone sector despite raising over $10 million in funding. Apparently they are focusing more on their e184 aerial taxi
Although as far as camera drones go, it is definitely hard to beat DJI, even on price now, and thanks to their 11k strong workforce it will take alot to take their marker share away in this sector. It is a shame since a monopoly is never realy good for innovation, but the only real hope is Yuneec, who as of now are still at abit of a disadvantage in terms of tech.
The interesting thing is that Intel own a majority of Yuneec, and also Modvidius (the computer vision AI chips that power all of the DJI smart vision features like object tracking and avoidance), so if anyone can put up a fight with DJI it would be Yuneec… but so far they have not delivered… Lets see what 2018 brings…
What are your predictions? Will DJI continue to dominate, or will DJI follow gopro with people having little reason to upgrade their phantoms with new versions being released in 2018?
I’ve got wild guesses and speculation, but from a stand point of having previously worked at a store that sold the Phantom 3, the Parot Bepob, Mambo, and AR2, as well as a few off brand replicas, but DJI has the market locked for entry level high end drones.
DJI can’t be beat in terms of out of the box reliability and usage. And it shows. How many companies are currently making a out of the box, RTF drones that can be bought at super stores? And at the price point they offer? There are other companies, but i’d see them returned all the time, people often citing disappointment of performance vs the cost they paid.
The other thing I’d hear customers complain about was customer service from the companies. I’ve personally dealt with both GoPro and DJI over issues with stuff I’ve purchased from them direct, and GoPro was horrendous, trying to blame me for stuff being cracked out of the box, as well as being used despite purchasing as new. DJI offered me multiple, easy to understand guides to try to fix it before finally offering to have it shipped in for repair or replacement.
As for the Yuneec being the only other contendor, i’m dubious, but hopeful. Yuneec may have Intel’s backing, but that dont mean anything unless they can create a contendor, and the closest they have is the Typhoon 4K and the Breeze 4K.
I think the only thing that can give DJI a fight is a modular system. Choose a frame, choose a flight core, choose your battery back, choose your motor/arm combo and click them all together, assembly is less than a minute. It’ll be easier for your average person to get into drones, and if done right, even allow other companies to make their own modules. It’ll require co-operation between companies and a standardization of sizes and ratings, which i doubt will happen.