Tough Market
“We exited hardware and we exited consumer partly because it was a tough market,” he said. “DJI is an amazing company and lots of people got pounded.
“It was just brutal.”
"We’re a Silicon Valley company and we’re supposed to be doing software and there are Chinese companies that are supposed to be doing hardware.”
Can't say I agree with some of these statements, but alas, this has all played out already. Other interesting tidbits relating to a previously proposed acquisition by DJI are also in the article.
Describes one of the last chapters of the 3DR history book fairly accurately though.
Link: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2016/10/05/3d-robotics-solo-crash-chris-anderson
Comments
I doubt Nikon or Canon would do it. I'm thinking Sony or Panasonic. Maybe Samsung.
Good Point Rob,
Now that "drones" Quadcopters really are becomming both a consumer and commercial reality, the real electronics companies just might give it a go.
Of course their liability attorneys will tell them they are out of their minds, but now that the money is seriously starting to flow, all possibilities are really open.
I'd love to see Sony or Nikon or Canon get into this, they could do seriously neat stuff and they have the manufacturing capability to back it up.
DJI's taking so much actual real engineering design in house is actually kind of unique in a Chinese market where copy and undercut the competition has really been the rule till now.
They even try to do it to DJI, but DJI with it's actual forward looking design and engineering seems to have such a significant lead and toehold that catching or surpassing them is going to be difficult even for the Chinese companies that do it best.
Once again the coming year is going to be really interesting, even more interesting than this year I suspect.
I doubt DJI will lose money on Mavic, I don't think they surprise themselves here, it is just part of their plan.
But they do move fast.
Best,
Gary
Am I the only one who doesn't think the Phantom is done? I think they might restyle it, but there's no reason to kill it.
I don't think the Mavic will be suited for all the same things the Phantom is doing now.
Yes, 3DR's "pivot" into enterprise seems like a late move into a saturated market, from a company with a poor track record. Not sure how it's doing to pan out.
I am afraid that nobody can catch DJI now. Especially not given their track record of aggressively crushing competition.
I think only an existing industrial giant electronics firm, like Sony, could catch them now.
Gary -- as always I love your posts. I am not sure I have seen a company quite like DJI, but I am sure I could be corrected. They seem clearly ahead of the the curve and they have reached the critical mass to be able to do ever more capable things at lower price points. They just do net yet seem to have a peer in their space. We do not really have a Samsung vs Apple situation here yet. Yuneec are not yet a serious competitor.
Hi Marc,
I agree that 3DR didn't have timing right on big production, but they also didn't have the consumer market primed and marketed to right either and their documentation and support for the Solo were also all way less than stellar.
I suspect the real driver was that they had so much venture capital that they really had to come up with a spectacular capital recovery plan to make the investors feel they were going to get a return on their Shark bucks.
The Solo is a really nice product but it took too long with too few in house engineers and had too many early bugs.
Kind of a classic post mortem for a whole lot of companies, especially ones with a meteoric initial rise.
Kind of like a rocket, took off really well but fizzled out before it reached orbit.
There is no way that 3DR can recoup the investments made let alone become a top tier competitor in the "software" market, after all the layoffs and venture capitalists abandoning the ship like rats what they have left is already eclipsed by smaller less wasteful companies that have thoughtfully carved out a share of the commercial markets.
If 3DR does anything at all it will be because qualcomm and especially Intel think it would be a good idea, but Intel is already at the forefront of vision based flight controller development and Qualcomm can certainly just do it's own thing however they want to.
It will be interesting to see what happens to the "DroneCode" alliance now, I suspect even the Platinum members will soon alchemically turn to dross.
DJI certainly scuttled future full price sales of their own Phantom with the Mavic, but they also once again took over the very top of the consumer market with a quadcopter with even more capability and probably cheaper to mass produce than the Phantom (and also with a smaller, friendlier and less public and politically threatening form factor).
All the left over Phantoms will get sold off at a discount too and at the end of the day it will be DJI win and 3DR lose.
Processor Technology, Godbout, Northstar, Morrow, Osborne, Next, 3DR - Maybe some body should play taps.
Best Regards,
Gary
GoPro carrying drones are not the really going to cut it. I think Karma will join Solo as another consumer GoPro drone crushed by DJI. But Mavic also seems to be cannibalizing DJI. You cannot give away a Phantom 4 now, let alone a Solo. 3DRs downfall was happening in full view of anyone that wanted to connect the dots. The pity is that Solo was good, if flawed. One feels that it could have been done on a smaller scale for a fraction of the cost. The absurd over production and ramping up of scale seems to be what did the damage.
Well, it's not like the diydrones commenter pool didn't jawbone him to sell 3DR as soon as possible. The current boom is fueled by buyouts, not insanely great products. "buyouts are the new bits" as Janet Yellen would say.
3DR Going after the commercial market, especially with something like their site scan, may prove to be another failure as well as the market is much more saturated than a couple of years ago. Looking at 3DR's offerings for construction vs. Kespry I don't see how they are going to compete? Especially if the Solo is their offering for commercial applications.
I love the design and production quality, although i have found some flaws for daily users. Maybe some day i could gather enough time and knowledge to build solo firmware and app in fully open source, and i am doing it.
The yocto image on stock solo and initramfs has been proved a good project for QA and expansion. I have seen DJI A2 have too many wired software issues, but solo is solid. (although my stock TF card i think it's a crap)
And now people in china is copying solo for just HDMI video link... (i have their product disassembled and fs analyzed.) too bad solo could not reach it's full potential.
I still believe that open source will be the driving force for unmanned aviation, as Linux kernel have resides in virtually everything and everywhere. Linux Flight Controller, Nodejs message breaker, UAVCAN actuator network, I am persuading capital to invest these things with my prototypes, and making these design free for study and fun in open source hardware.
DJI have been pushing it too far too fast, like Japanese CE companies, the technology will reach a peak for some application, and doing moors law for the last is choking your own throat.
For the last two years, ArduPilot has lagging behind too far from now what consumer product have
* FOC ESC
* Linux kernel mode sensor data acquistion
* PREEMPT_RT priority optimization for altitude and control
* Sensor metering and sensor technologies
* GIS integration
* Camera Integration
* SDR radio
These are mature technologies for DJI or Bebop, especially DJI have 3 generation of SDR modules, even have propriety ASIC RF front end. And for visual robotic sensing from movidius.
It's not saying open source is not for serious people with capable skills to compete with now day top company, in the contrary communities like Hack a day, element14, intel IoT are getting popular, and some time you will see some master piece of old CE parts repurpose project which was done by very genius engineers.
I think it's time for a change, forget about how you can sell your next re-layout FC hardware and prevent from copied from Chinese, think about do you really need such a code base no one can learn in a week to involve your dev? I am so occupied for this thinking, and beginning my new project based on Linux now.
I also heard that GoPro had sniffed their best engineers. The fact that no articles were published about the karma is the best proof.
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