Propwash #16 - Lets read some reports

There were a couple of new industry reports that were released recently that are completely worth going through to know where the industry stands and where it is headed. As with my previously mentioned methodology of reading industry reports, we shall focus more on the trends and less on the actual numbers. And of course, we try to take everything in context especially if they’re surprising.

DroneAnalyst published their annual report for 2021. The full report can be purchased on their site, but there’s a good summary available online. Here are some of the biggest insights and takeaways from the report-

The headline from this report was the surprising drop in the commercial market share by DJI. DroneAnalyst reports that DJI’s dominance in the market takes a hit with a 15% drop from the year before to just 54% this year. While DJI is still miles ahead of its competitors, it’s dominance in the commercial drone market is in a decline. This was a surprise to many, and was extensively covered by all the major drone news outlets - DroneDJ, DroneXL, Drone Girl, etc.

DroneAnalyst also reports that the consumer market still remains a DJI stronghold with a market share of 94%.

The decline might seem surprising, but it is worth noting that the figures represent all new purchases made this year. i.e.- only 54% of all new drones purchased this year were DJI drones. This does not cover the existing fleet numbers. The reasons for the decline are not straightforward. Some attribute it to the recent crackdown of DJI drones by the US government.

The numbers need to be taken with a pinch of salt. From the data gathered by DroneResponders consisting of local government agencies and related organizations, the public safety sector is still dominated by DJI drones at 90%.

Every year, Drone Industry Insights releases a ranking of the top drone service providers. This year, the top three remote sensing service providers are Aerodyne group, Terra Drone, and Cyberhawk. I wouldn’t pay attention to the exact order of the ranking, as ranking things which don’t share a common metric is slightly subjective. However, there’s some merit to identifying the key players in the field.

Here’s a quick graphic I made on how the rankings changed from the previous year. 

The amount of new entrants in the rankings is surprising, and is perhaps an indicator that DroneII’s methodology still needs some tweaking. It’s not often you see a new entrant in the space that would be ranked highly or such high volatility in rankings in a single year.

While the top three are published on the blog post, the top twenty can be extracted from the incompletely sanitized sample report if you know where to look. Subscribe if you want more stuff like this.

The drone delivery service provider rankings remain the same, with Zipline, Wing and Matternet at the top three for the last three years.

This one’s a little different. Drone Industry Insights conducts surveys to get an idea of what the industry thinks are the important issues, factors and forces in the market. They call it the drone industry barometer. Here are what I find to be the main takeaways-

This has some of the best cinematic FPV shots I’ve seen. Check it out

Every week I also share something unrelated to drones, but makes for an interesting read. This week’s pick is an excerpt from Carl Sagan -

Congratulations on making it all the way down here. Hope you enjoyed this issue of Propwash. Subscribe if you haven’t already.

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Keep flying,

Nihal

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