Unmanned Aerial Systems – A Beginners Guide
An Introduction To The UAS Industry – Training, News and Comment
If you haven’t seen this new short from 3DR, watch it now…
It feels like a trailer to a new epic sci fi movie, the soundtrack is big and the cost make the video, even bigger!
Can’t lie, this video sold it to me, i wanna be a Drononaut too! (coined that one)
With Lily coming early next year and the 3DR Solo, almost here, consumers have never had so much choice…one thing is for sure, DJI have some real competition now.
TU
Meet Lily. A new UAS, designed for extreme sport enthusiast, who want to take personal footage to a new level – move over GoPro!
Simply throw Lily, into the air and she uses a GPS tracker to ensures she stays close by, and alerts the drone to elevation changes. This is a great function, similar to the Perceptor Drone i wrote about last month.
You can tell Lily, to take a photo, fly in front, behind by your side, or even circle around you. And it gets better. Lily has a built in microphone which is totally awesome!
As an additional extra you can buy a waterproof case, which would make it a must have for white water rafters and surfers everywhere. Oh yeah, it floats too! POW – take that DJI!
Lily packs a 12-megapixle camera, that captures 1080p @ 60fps and 720 @ 120fps. With a 94 degree field of view, a price tag of $999 and a shipping date of Feb 2016, both the Phantom 3 and Solo have some serious competition on their hands. And it gets better still; if you like you can pre-order now and get it when it ships for $499, until June 15th so hurry!
I can tell you this, if this works as well as the promo video shows, i will be looking to buy one. It will be interesting to see, how easy it is to control without a standard RC.
THUMBS UP LILY!
Read more on Mashable. http://mashable.com/2015/05/12/lily-camera-drone-follow-video/
A few months ago a wrote about DJI annual and quarterly profits, and how difficult it was to get any real numbers. Well, here is a number $10 billion for you.
I meant to post this a few weeks ago, one of my oldest friends is a trader, he was telling me that his firm was thinking of backing DJI. I told him it was a no brainer, even though the new 3DR Solo looks like it could take a chunk out of the Phantom 3’s market, DJI have a bright future ahead of them.
VS 
DJI is currently looking to raise money from investors for a a $10,000,000,00 or ten billion for a stock market valuation!
Not bad for a company that didn’t exist ten years ago. They now employ over 3000 staff with offices in America, Germany and Netherlands, and distributors all over the world, its not a bad investment if you have the cash!
Well done Frank Wang (CEO), who set the company up while at University, i barely even made it to class!
TU!
PS – how sweet does the new solo look. Looking forward to seeing that in action!
Earlier i wrote a short piece, on the potential release of the new DJI Phantom 3.
It got me thinking, if the DJI Phantom range is the most widely recognisable and purchased consumer UAS, how many UAVs actually been sold world wide?
I set out to write this post, expecting it to take me 20 minutes and just link through to a few relevant web sites. as you can probably tell, this hasn’t proved as simple as i first thought.
Actual figures are hard to find. I recently wrote about 3D Robotics, there top chap, Chris Anderson estimates 500,000 UAVs have already been sold in the US. he predicts 3DR will turnover $40Million this year, which equates to over 53,000 units. accessorises not included!
Bloomberg state that Amazon in 2014, were selling in excess of 10,000 UAS units a month.
http://dronelife.com/2015/01/24/drone-sales-figures-2014-hard-navigate/
(I would suggest you read the ‘Drone life’ article it is extensive and far more informative than my report)
200,000 a month in 2014. Thats over 6500 a day, last year.
So how many of these are DJI products, clearly the market leader in consumer UAS.
It has become somewhat ubiquitous of late to read another article of a UAS being flown somewhere it shouldn’t, and 99% of the time, its reported to be a DJI Phantom.
So just how many DJI products are there in consumers hands. Well from my research i have yet to find an accurate figure for DJI product sales. I did manage to find this quote from an article in later 2013
DJI does not release sales figures, but Mr Mortimer (Gary Mortimer, editor of leading international industry website sUAS News,) estimates that when the Phantom first launched in late 2012, the company was selling 8,000 units a month.
He believes there has since been a significant jump in global sales.
“In Europe, I know they sold more than 6,000 units just in Switzerland,” he says.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-14/chinese-made-drones-programmed-with-no-fly-zones/5388356
In 2012 8,000 units were selling a month, you can bet this figure is closer to 25,000 a month in 2015. At least that in fact!
If anyone has more detailed sales figure for UAS consumer purchases, please let me know.
TU
Unmanned Aerial Systems - A Beginners Guide 