What American companies sell drones? I never looked at price when I purchased mine. My decision was driven by the amount of educational support that was available to me via forums like this and YouTube.Look at the big picture, not if you will have to pay more for your quad.
That is how DJI got ahead, by being able to under cut everyone elses prices. Now maybe an American company can compete instead of going under. More jobs here. More competition. Better service. End of the drone monopoly.
You have kind of shown my point by your statement. If you read about DJI's agenda. If a company puts out a drone they plan to under cut it in price and flood the market with their drones. Also to dominate the the market so fast that no one else can compete.What American companies sell drones? I never looked at price when I purchased mine. My decision was driven by the amount of educational support that was available to me via forums like this and YouTube.
DJI outcompetes all the Chinese drone makers too by producing better products and innovating rather than producing copycat offerings.That is how DJI got ahead, by being able to under cut everyone elses prices. Now maybe an American company can compete instead of going under. More jobs here. More competition. Better service. End of the drone monopoly.
The Karma went under because it was a rubbish drone.Karma went under last winter. They were made by GoPro.
Look at the big picture, not if you will have to pay more for your quad.
That is how DJI got ahead, by being able to under cut everyone elses prices. Now maybe an American company can compete instead of going under. More jobs here. More competition. Better service. End of the drone monopoly.
Sure hope his trade war isn’t gonna result in a 25% increase for DJI drones. Has anyone heard anything?
Purchase price is only part of the equation. A large part, but not the only part. They spent the money early on to build the infrastructure to support their platforms. They spent a lot of money on the software side. There is a fair amount on AI running to handle collision detection and stuff like to track your hands to control drones. DJI made the decision to provide APIs to allow apps to control the devices. There's a cost to that and it's not cheap. That's one of the reasons they partnered with Microsoft, even DJI doesn't have enough resources to fully exploit AI and CV on the device.You have kind of shown my point by your statement. If you read about DJI's agenda. If a company puts out a drone they plan to under cut it in price and flood the market with their drones. Also to dominate the the market so fast that no one else can compete.
Karma went under last winter. They were made by GoPro.
Do you have any direct knowledge of what amount of the actual manufacturing DJI does in house? Wcomfortable they do the assembly. What about sub components? We know there are at least three external manufacturers for the completed batteries (it’s basically a text book implementation of the TI BMS for the smarts), hard to beleive the cameras aren’t supplied complete- the P3 lenses were basically a security camera Grade assay from a non DJI entity. We know they don’t make sensors and untill recently used an M43 mount for the X5 so nothing real fancy there. The OA tech is bought in, DJI may have worked with Movidius early on in development but it’s all intel now. Gesture recognition is movidius/intel brains. I’m not disagreeing with you but someone like intel could give DJI a serious run if people were prepared to pay more for quality. Most aren’t.Purchase price is only part of the equation. A large part, but not the only part. They spent the money early on to build the infrastructure to support their platforms. They spent a lot of money on the software side. There is a fair amount on AI running to handle collision detection and stuff like to track your hands to control drones. DJI made the decision to provide APIs to allow apps to control the devices. There's a cost to that and it's not cheap. That's one of the reasons they partnered with Microsoft, even DJI doesn't have enough resources to fully exploit AI and CV on the device.
And there is the support software. They geofence their drones, but provide the ability to self-unlock from warning areas. That requires the software and servers to support that. Not rocket science, but there is a dollar cost to develop and maintain services like that. If you are going to compete with DJI, you are going to need deep pockets because you need to catch up to the money they already spent to get where they are. When DJI releases a new platform, they get to piggyback on the development and support costs that were spent before. That makes for a huge entry barrier for anyone else that enters the market.
There's a huge 3rd party ecosystem around DJI products. You need to have market share before you get the accessories that bring all the extra value to our birds.
DJI is the 800 lb gorilla in this space, and that's not going to change anytime soon. A 25% tariff (percentage selected from the Bureau of Imaginary Numbers) wouldn't affect DJI's market share. No one else is going to be competitive. Part of DJI's price advantage is that they make their own drones, they do not contract out the manufacture. The only non-Chinese company that I could think of that makes any number of consumer drones is Parrot. Parrot is French company that designs their drones, but they contract the manufacture in, wait for it, China. Parrot starts out with a price disadvantage because they don't own the manufacturing process.
If you are a US company that wants to be in the drone market, the money is not in hardware. It's in the software running on the drones and the infrastructure behind providing drone imagery as a service.
The Karma failed for a number of reasons. The primary one was that it wasn't as good as comparable DJI drones. If you want to compete with DJI, you need to bring something new or better to the table. They didn't. First production run models dropping out of the sky due to a faulty batter latch design didn't help. GoPro had to do the Karma, integrated cameras on drones affected their bottom line. Karma could have worked, there is market for a drone that worked well with their cameras. They just blew the execution. Which is a shame, competition helps everyone.
Do you have any direct knowledge of what amount of the actual manufacturing DJI does in house? Wcomfortable they do the assembly. What about sub components? We know there are at least three external manufacturers for the completed batteries (it’s basically a text book implementation of the TI BMS for the smarts), hard to beleive the cameras aren’t supplied complete- the P3 lenses were basically a security camera Grade assay from a non DJI entity. We know they don’t make sensors and untill recently used an M43 mount for the X5 so nothing real fancy there. The OA tech is bought in, DJI may have worked with Movidius early on in development but it’s all intel now. Gesture recognition is movidius/intel brains. I’m not disagreeing with you but someone like intel could give DJI a serious run if people were prepared to pay more for quality. Most aren’t.
This is not much of an argument, if that was the point of your post.It would take years for a domestic startup to catch up with DJI, and they would certainly not manufacture domestically.
Do you understand how tariffs work and who pays them? (hint .. it's not the Chinese)I’d support any tariff on Chinese products that brings them in line with our trade deficit.
Umm ... successes like the Taj Mahal Casino resort, the Plaza Hotel and Casino, and Marina Hotel Casino that all went bankrupt, twice?Love or hate him, you can’t knock his success in past business deals and current growth of our country!
The same could have been said everytime someone had an idea, for an automobile, computer, smartphone, etc.
When has any US tariff resulted in lower prices for the consumer? In 2009, President Obama slapped a 35% tariff on Chinese tires. That saved about 1200 jobs in the US tire industry. The average price of a Chinese tire went from $31 to $39. US tire manufactures raised their prices by about 3.2%, a cost that was passed the consumer to the amount of $1.1 billion. China retaliated with a tariff on chicken parts that cost US chicken processors $1 billion in lost sales. SourceI’d support any tariff on Chinese products that brings them in line with our trade deficit. Not to mention the years of technology theft from us! Why bother to build something new when they can just steal the data from us knowing we would not retaliate! However President Trump, with his business knowledge, knows how do deal with cheaters like Red China and in the long run don’t be surprised if DJI future sakes prices here don’t drop! President Trump, Love or hate him, you can’t knock his success in past business deals and current growth of our country!
Thanks
Jim
WA5TEF