Parrot is the only publicly-listed consumer/commercial drone company, so their quarterly and annual financial reports are one of the few places to get accurate and up-to-date numbers on how the drone industry is really doing. They published their Q4 2016 and full-year 2016 financials earlier this week and as always it makes for interesting reading.
Some observations:
- Consumer drones continue to be tough for everyone (aside from DJI) due to rapid price declines and commodification: Parrot's consumer drone sales fell by 46% in 2016.
- Gross margins fell even faster, from 50% in Q4 2015 to 20% in Q4 2016
- As a result, Parrot lost a lot of money in 2016: losses were $138m for the year and $45m in Q4 alone.
- Sales are slowing at their commercial drone subsidiary, Sensefly, too, down 32% to $15m for the year.
- But their partially-owned software subsidiary, Pix4D, had another great year, up 160% to $16m for the year.
Parrot says that it expects 2017 to be better, in part because it will cut costs by eliminating 250 jobs and introduce new products. It will also spin off its older automotive and consumer electronic sides and become a pure-play drone company.
Bottom line: drone hardware is a tough market, consumer drone hardware is even tougher, but the market for commercial drone software, while still young, is looking good.
Comments
Have to disagree Gary. I love my Ultimaker 2. Incredibly, I now have over 2500 hours of fairly trouble-free printing on it. Just wear items. And I'm producing parts that I could not to any other way. The entire body of my helicopter is 3D Printed. It weighs the same as a fiberglass body would. But looks so much better. I'm also printing light duty bracketry, etc, that could not be produced any other way.
A big part of the problem, is so many people are very unimaginative, and print big solid flat slabs of plastic that would be better cut out from a sheet.
I'm doing every thing from sophisticated Pixhawk mounts, to 3-dimensional wire-ways.
Some of the plastics available are quite good.
@Marc,
Possibly I exxagerate the do something deficit a bit, for a lot of DIY fun stuff, a 3D printer could quite possibly be the quickest easiest way to put together a bracket or motor support.
I have a complete machine shop and my favorite tool is my 81" belt sander.
Give me a piece of almost anything and I can generally whittle it mostly into what I need with that tool alone.
Die grinders, drills and files can finish off the rest.
Of course a good digital caliper is very handy.
Best,
Gary
Hi Andy,
I have a Boss Laser Engraver and I built my own quite heavy duty DIY CNC machine.
I really wanted to like 3D printers, you can make such neat stuff with them.
The problem is I am also very much a materials guy - really into what materials, metals, plastics, reinforced plastics, CF actually work best for various tasks and the bottom line is that 3D printers generally do not produce robust products because of the materials used and the method of construction.
If you want to make a cute Makey robot doll or a complex multidimensional skeleton solid to sit on your desk, great.
But anything you make to actually "do something" - part of a machine, simply is better off being made in almost any material other than what comes out of a 3D printer.
For very low volume stuff and prototypes you can whip out some nifty looking stuff that may work well enough to get you some funding on Kickstarter, or Indiegogo, but there you are generally dealing with an audience of Neophytes who look more at hype than substance.
Who have no idea of the severe limitations of 3D printing (lengthy per item production time and flimsy materials.)
Some companies have really tried to improve on the quality by even adding things such as continuous embedded reinforcing fibers, but it's still thermoplastic, flexible and not very strong and the filament adding process slows and complicates an already tricky methodology.
I am not saying they are not at least somewhat useful, just that their practicality and utility has been way oversold and is misunderstood by the majority of purchasers and enthusiasts and other interested people.
As far as Injection molding, you have a much wider choice of plastics and methods and pressures, and many of those will produce a "gear" with superior characteristics to anything that you can make on a 3D printer.
Even the sintered metal 3D printers do not generally produce as robust a product as pultrusion and other molding methods.
There are probably exceptions to that last statement and I have a hunch Boeing could explain those further, but generally, the current consumer 3D printers are good for making toys and doing some quick prototyping where appearance is more important than function.
I love CNC and I hope that they eventually figure out how to utilize significantly better materials than they can now in 3D printers.
Best Regards,
Gary
@Gary
Glad to see that you keep the shape and are unquestionably still a sharp shooter ;-)
See you later
"You can makes some really nifty looking things with 3D printing, they just aren't good for anything.
One of the 3D printer companies makes its plastic injection gears and a bunch of the parts for it's printers on 100 of it's printers. Personally I do not consider this an asset or a good reason to buy their printer."
Whoa there. You are unlikely to have much luck trying to make a gearbox for your car, but for many applications they work very well. As it happens the way a 3d printer lays down gears works well since the material is drawn as it is laid giving a grain, unlike injection moulding which justs lays a blob
@ Patrick,
Sintered metal 3D pritning is a whole different ball game and several more zeros to the left of the decimal point.
The basic problem with "consumer" 3D printers is that the plastics they produce with are intrinsically heavy and neither strong nor durable and the printing process itself is SLOW.
Basically warm formed thermoplastics - Blecch! reinforced or not.
For manufacturing I doubt that 3D printing even very high end 3D printing will ever become popular, because the bottom line is that it is a very slow process on a per unit basis. And in manufacturing time IS money.
3D printing will probably find some very unique specific niches such as turbine blades where cost is already so high that time doesn't matter.
And of course, there are those shapes and constructions you just can't make any other way.
Which is really why 3D printing was so nifty in the first place.
You can makes some really nifty looking things with 3D printing, they just aren't good for anything.
One of the 3D printer companies makes its plastic injection gears and a bunch of the parts for it's printers on 100 of it's printers. Personally I do not consider this an asset or a good reason to buy their printer.
Best Regards,
Gary
@Jack depends on what market
3D Printers aka -Additive Manufacturing- for the automotive industry is a fast growing part of the value chain and this trend will stop once the whole car will be printed out
@Jack +1!
Definitely don't invest in 3D printers.
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