This post will also appear in sUAS News ‘The Market’ and is a follow up to a previous DIY Drones post: New Research on Drone Buying Experience.
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We just released “Drones in the Channel: 2016 Market Report,” a research study examining drone sales and distribution channels in North America. It’s the first in-depth study of drone sales channels and reveals mixed distribution tactics as well as pinpoints market share of major UAV brands.
The report is a result of a three-month project sponsored by BZ Media. Incorporating qualitative research and including interviews with major drone manufacturers and drone distributors, the study also contains the results of a quantitative precision survey. It offers fresh insights on the major brands and the growing role that distribution and reseller businesses play in the sale of consumer and commercial drones. You can read the press release here.
Among the many insights we got from the research, these two are worth highlighting:
- Most drones costing more than $2,000 are purchased for professional use.
- DJI’s overall market share in North America is about 50 percent—not 70 percent as popularly described.
Read more here: http://droneanalyst.com/2016/04/25/insights-from-new-market-research-on-drones-sales/
Comments
Hi LD,
I agree, right now, there is still major media exposure and a huge "fad" effect making drones popular at the moment for a significant segment of the "consumer" market.
But as time goes on, that market will die back to serious consumers and hobbyists who are actually willing to put in the effort to realistically get what they want and to toys.
As for the professional market, it is still suffering from early days and not very well defined expectancies or capabilities as well as good and bad regulations spewing forth at frequent intervals.
However, that said, it is also true that real professional equipment and infrastructure is here and growing in influence every day.
And it also seems very likely that as time goes on, all the issues will eventually resolve themselves in a workable if not optimal way.
It will definitely be good to see the "Fad" fade and the real work begin.
Putting on my business hat for a moment, I think it's fascinating to see the evolution of this market from hype to maturity. As the hype fades a space opens up for well designed and properly supported products that can now become profitable. The flip side is that the space for cheap knock-offs is steadily closing, or at least drifting down into the murky waters of "cheap" toys.
Using LightWare as an example of a company supplying products into the drone market (since I have the sales figures) we see a rapid growth in demand from professionally managed companies who are making a serious effort to be part of the long term opportunities offered by drone technology. These companies are focussed more on providing end-to-end solutions than simply mass producing cheap drones. Dealing with these companies is starting to feel like the familiar ground that we have trodden for the last 30 years in industrial markets, where customers are extremely demanding, quality must meet certified standards and support must be immediate.
This transition to a standards driven market is of course mirrored by FAA (and other) regulations and despite what the DIY community might think of these draconian measures, they do provide a framework in which companies who are serious about making money from drones can operate with much lower business risk, meaning that they can invest in long term projects and customer support structures without worrying that they will be taken out of the market tomorrow by a cheap but uncertified, and therefore unsafe, alternative.
Hi Rob, Craig,
I actually think Colin's analysis is probably correct relating to the $2000.00 plus "drones" he is talking about, they tend to get a pretty sophisticated audience, who are also much better prepared for the problems and pitfalls.
I am specifically talking about the huge and growing consumer market for sub $2000.00 and for that matter 90 percent sub $1000.00 "drones".
The very large majority of the people buying these are utterly clueless, have done no real research whatever and just think they look cool or might be a really good way to take some nifty pictures or video.
That is the huge bulk of both online purchasers and hobby shop customers.
And I can tell you for sure, many of the Hobby Shops wish they had never heard of "drones" or multicopters at this point.
You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll kiss eight hundred bucks goodbye. Terrible misquote from Ernie Fosselius's Hardware Wars.
Unfortunately a very common occurrence and very unhappy customers.
Those of us who are here are NOT the general public, and so far the general public who has bought in is not entirely thrilled.
I don't think FPV Racers like the Eachine 250 are "drones" and should not be included in this. Unless they have at least GPS position hold and RTL, it's just a quadcopter.
Craig, did you really just suggest that people who order a drone from Amazon are _more educated_ than those that actually walk into a hobby store?
Opps, forgot the link in the last comment!
http://www.droneflyers.com/2016/04/worldwide-consumer-camera-drone-...
I had the same question Rob had....thanks for answering!
BUT, there are the questions we've discussed before about what price range truly constitutes the consumer market (I say $400-$1500 currently, but it changes).
Also, units and dollars are obviously different - so even when reporting blurbs of "market share" in this blog post it should be qualified (50% of $$ or units?)....Example, Parrot BeBop and even Eachine 250 are big sellers and average about $400 - while other big sellers average 3X that.
Ideally such a survey could be done on a more general population - that is, the general public (as opposed to ANY qualifications except being on the internet) but getting enough numbers so that 1000's of drone purchases were represented.
Until then all our guesses, including these, are probably as close as we can come.
As you (Colin) said yourself, the devil is in the details. The industry continues to count $13 toys as units - as if they have a relation to $1000+ models...etc.
For those interested in a total rule of thumb of $400-$1500 consumer RTF's worldwide, I threw this together - it probably is in the realm somewhere!
@Gary - I have to wonder if Hobby Shop customers (or owners) are indicative of the entire market. It may be that consumers there are less educated (walk-ins....aside from the long time R/Cers) than those who buy online. Most drones are sold online (IMHO)...Amazon, DJI Direct, etc. and perhaps these customers do more research?
You can check out the Amazon reviews on products like Yuneec 4K and DJI P3 - they are quite good, which indicates that the majority of customers are delighted.
Hi Rob - Thanks. sUAS News was not our only source - in fact it was a very minor one. We did several mass emails. We vetted our results with CTA and NPD data and are very close in almost all categories. We did find bias in the NPD data - which gets most of its input from customers of mass merchandisers. So they missed the direct from manufacturer (25%) and dedicated drone distributors and hobby stores.
Here is some informal market research from our own local hobby shop.
Drones - multicopters in particular have been the worst product ever.
Reason, lots of new untrained non-RC hobbyist people buying them with promises of foolproof semi automatic operation.
Bring backs and resentment among customers very high.
Many of them feel they were very mislead by advertising of advanced features and ease of use.
More uncompensated product support required than for all the rest of products put together.
To some of those responsible in part for this, I could say I told you so, Hmmm, I guess I just did.
Interesting results, and even includes statistical certainty.
Is it possible there is some bias in your numbers due to the somewhat restricted targeting of the survey? (ie: I'm not sure about the exposure sUAS gets with a wide swath of the RTF Consumer market.)