In addition to visiting some traditional manufacturing and industrial automation exhibitions, I also had the opportunity to visit some emerging industry exhibitions and visit some start-up drone companies. At the drone exhibition, Chinese drone manufacturers are very popular, with DJI, Red Sword, Zero Degrees, and Yuneec having high visibility and market share in the global military drone market. In addition to the drones themselves, DJI and Red Sword also have a very high market share in flight control. Many drone companies in the United States, Japan, and Germany are using DJI’s drone flight controllers to build their drones. Due to the accumulated flight experience and parameters of these Chinese companies’ flight controllers, their performance is stable. In addition, over 90% of the DC brushless motors used in drones are from China. Foreign professionals have given high praise to Chinese made drones, flight controllers, and DC brushless motors. The rise of China’s drone industry, coupled with a well-established supply chain capability, should be one of the reasons. It is easy to find electronic component suppliers, sensor manufacturers, and motor manufacturers in Shenzhen, as well as third-party outsourcing manufacturing companies.
Skytech in London is an exhibition focused on drones, where they met Red Sword, the UK agent of Zero Degrees Intelligence Control, and a company in Qingdao that specializes in fixed wing drones. A professor from Southampton gave a speech on drone technology and praised the drone seeding project conducted by China Agricultural University. Another drone expert analyzed the battery manufacturers and technology of Chinese drones and believed that their products are top-notch in terms of performance and stability. Of course, the prices are also quite competitive.
Techfrontier in Tokyo was not originally a professional exhibition for drones, and the addition of drones during the exhibition was very popular. The enthusiasm and flow of visitors even exceeded TechFrontier’s main exhibition items such as motor control and power supply. The exhibition is mainly hosted by local Japanese manufacturers. Yamaha is the largest drone manufacturer in Japan, with over 3000 agricultural drones used in Japanese farmland. PARRAT from France, Aeryon from Canada, SKycatch and Topcon from the United States all participated in the exhibition. Most of the core technology team of a large Japanese drone company comes from China.
The Aero Friedrichshafen 2015 exhibition in Germany has a large scale, featuring various types of civilian aircraft. As it is a German aviation exhibition, there are hardly any Chinese manufacturers in sight, and drones only occupy one of the pavilions. Yuneec’s agent in Germany participated in the exhibition, and the exhibits are also very rich, mainly targeting the consumer field. Many people at the exhibition also purchased DJI drones on site. This is one of the father and son pairs. When I asked them where they bought them, they enthusiastically said this was their second drone and praised DJI’s products.
Due to the emerging nature of the drone industry, there are no clear market leaders in either the German or Japanese markets, and everyone is relatively small in scale. However, the number and quality of small and medium-sized drone enterprises in Germany are significantly better than in Japan. There have been some influential private drone companies in Germany, such as Ascending Technologies. The strong drone manufacturers in Japan are all drone departments of large Japanese companies, such as Yamaha, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, etc.
It is worth noting that with the improvement and maturity of drone technology, the competition in the future drone industry may shift from drone manufacturing to industry data services, which may marginalize drone manufacturers and reduce them to simple manufacturers. Therefore, Chinese drone manufacturers should also provide more industry know how based solutions to accumulate industry data.
(The author is an analyst at IHS Consulting in the United States)