Question

What kind of firm strategy do companies have in the drone industry?

Answer 1

The drone market today can be described as a melting pot of different technologies, where the end consumer is provided with combinations of hard- and software components and service features. It is important to sustain strategic alliances or invest in a strong UAV portfolio in order to establish enduring success in this extremely fast moving industry. This is nothing new and, as we have seen in our recent report, this is a phase that started a long time ago, long before anyone thought drones would be the next big thing.

From a very early stage Parrot started developing technical solutions. The purchase of Pix4D (2012) and MicaSense (2014) software manufacturers was a major strategic step and paved the way for highly sophisticated end-to-end solutions. Although profit margins were at this time very low in the commercial UAV industry, Parrot has invested heavily in their new strategy. Building a new market segment has never been easy (or cheap) and Asian low-cost competitors are also putting a lot of pressure on market deficits, especially in the hobby / prosumer field.

Now, Intel Corp. opts for a pro-active approach and moves into the market by acquiring the puzzle's missing pieces around their high-performance chipsets. The Intel RealSense platform integrates hardware and software in a way that allows cameras to process and understand images, and ultimately gives flying drones "machine vision." Until purchasing the German drone manufacturer Ascending Technologies earlier this year, the two companies had already worked closely to develop the UAV sense and avoid systems. The largest and undoubtedly most game-changing change by Intel was the purchase of Movidius, the smartphone vision processor company.

Although some of the most creative drone applications may take years to create, stakeholders government officials, developers, regulators, leaders of the UAS industry, and corporate adopters must realize how the environment is changing and start refining their UAS strategies now if they want to branch out and capture added value beyond their current uses.