As many of you know, Jordi Munoz and I founded 3DR in 2009 as a way to help get drone technology into the hands of the masses. And it certainly has reached the masses—these days, there’s never a day without many drone stories being published, and interest only continues to grow.
3DR continues to grow and evolve. Where we were once a company focused on bags of parts and bare boards, we are increasingly centered around integrated products that just work for people, products that allow people to focus on the results rather than the mechanism. Additionally, we’re placing bigger bets on a smaller number of products, with Solo being the prime example (so far!). Today, we are more than 200 employees and the overall business grew by more than 500% this year.
Like the drone industry overall, we have evolved from a DIY company to a mass-production company and now compete directly with DJI and Parrot, both of which manufacture in large-scale factories in Shenzhen. We do the same with the Solo family and our future products.
For those of you who are familiar with my 2012 book Makers: The New Industrial Revolution, you may recall that this was always the plan. The above is a chart from that book, which shows that as volumes approach 100,000 units a year, economies of scale and a focus on margins require a move to mass production and deep supply chain integration. That's the volume 3DR is now at. For a product that increasingly resembles a smartphone, this scale can really only be done in Shenzhen, the capital of the smartphone industry.
As part of this transition, we are in the process of sunsetting many of our legacy products, which were made in our Tijuana factory. There are now many great frames available, many supplier of FPV cameras, and many companies focused solely on very specific drone components. In the process of winding down some of our older products, we’ll do our best to point you to alternatives. And of course, many of you here already build and release technology that surpasses what exists commercially today!
Going forward, we will focus on the Solo family and other core elements of our next-gen platform. In particular, we will continue to offer Pixhawk-compatible autopilots, with improved versions designed in cooperation with partners. And autopilots continue to be a core focus of 3DR, with exciting new platforms coming in 2016.
3DR will continue to work on making a difference where we can best do so: in providing highly integrated, innovative, and fully configurable complete systems. Additionally, we will continue to provide tools to enable people to stretch the boundaries of what this technology can do, and to work with true innovators like those in this community to build the core elements of our common drone future.
You can count on us continuing to be VERY active in the DIY Drones community (today, seven years after founding it, I still post and comment every day -- it’s a source of constant joy and amazement for me, and one of my proudest creations). You all have been a central part of 3DR’s vision and development and will continue to be so—and we will continue to be active contributors back to both this community and the broader Dronecode development project -- indeed, this focus on becoming a much bigger company will allow us to devote even more resources into contributing open source code to the community and recruiting more partners to do so as well.
At 43 companies and counting, Dronecode has more than doubled over the past year, and we will lead its march as the world’s leading open drone platform by extending the platform into video, the cloud and advanced computing by creating world-class developers tools such as Dronekit and the Solo SDK.
Thanks,
Chris
Comments
No surprise here. Another casualty of the 1980s/1990s MBA programs and business practices. Not sustainable nor adaptable. Building a lot of ready-to-fly aircraft just to compete with the other toy makers in search of an investors or an exit strategy. It's pretty apparent that 3DR "drones" are hammer looking for a nail and 3DR recognizes this and is now trying to "cash out". Hopefully the FAA will take note of DJI/Yuneec and other players, like 3DR, who are flooding the market with not-ready-for-prime-time technology and hold them accountable for those products. Ready-to-fly, mass produced toys are what has led to the current hostile environment with respect to our industry. Enjoy the 15 minutes of "flight".(adapted from Andy Warhol)
The reason we so strongly supported open hardware is to ensure that the community will never be dependent on a single vendor for hardware. Today Pixhawk is one of the most popular designs out here, and compatible models are available from hundreds of other vendors (such as the excellent HKPilot 32). And, as I said in the post above, we will continue Pixhawk support for years to come. I'll repeat the bolded part in the post above:
+ 1 for Ben.
Today's purchasers want to know the life expectancy of the product that THEY invest a huge amount of time and effort to understanding and applying to their vehicles. Is the Pixhawk doomed? is it time to go elsewhere?
It's likely a logical evolution for 3DR, but I've got the feeling that there's a hidden roadmap that we discover only day after day, and it may be coincidental but there were more event in the last few month than in the last several years :
I understand that the company is changing and has to adapt to a competitive market, but if there are still other news, or better if there's a vision of what 3DR will be in two years it could be nice to communicate it more directly.
If 3DR is to become another Dji, that's fine, but people who are today investing in Pixhawks or many other legacy products may be interested in knowing if it will be still supported in two years, or what's the big picture.
Excellent article! It still surprises me to see Chris Anderson posting and helping users here and drones-discuss. I hope the Iris+ isn't being phased out, I was looking at buying one soon.
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