‘Very difficult decision’: Skydio exits consumer drone market

Skydio, the US drone maker considered by many to be the only real competition to China’s DJI, has announced it will no longer manufacture recreational or hobby drones. Skydio cofounder and CEO Adam Bry says the company has taken the “very difficult decision” to exit the consumer business “in order to put everything we’ve got into serving our enterprise and public sector customers.”

Skydio’s consumer drones have enjoyed a great run for four years thanks to their impressive autonomy and AI features. But an even greater “transformative impact” has been witnessed by the company’s enterprise and government users, Bry explains.

According to Bry, over 1,500 enterprise and public sector customers rely on Skydio to put sensors in dangerous and important places to perform inspections, find missing children, and protect troops around the world.

“Our drones are making the core industries that our civilization runs on — public safety, transportation, energy, construction, and defense — safer and more efficient. And it’s becoming more and more clear every day that we need trusted, secure drones to meet these critical applications. The impact we’re having with our enterprise and public sector customers has become so compelling that it demands nothing less than our full focus and attention,” Bry stresses.

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The result is that the drone maker will no longer be offering Skydio 2+ Starter, Sports, Cinema, or Pro Kits. And, obviously, there’s not going to be a Skydio 3.

Commercial enterprises and public sector organizations will still be able to purchase the Skydio 2+ Enterprise Kit, though. And the company will continue to provide software and customer support for existing customers.

Skydio further says it will retain an inventory of accessories for as long as it can to support the need for replacement batteries, propellers, charging cables, etc. Additionally, it will continue to offer in-warranty repairs as well as honor the terms of Skydio Care for existing users. Customers can file claims per usual at skydio.com/care.

‘Writing was on the wall’

This news may come as a shock to some Skydio users, but for industry insiders, the development is not really surprising. DJI’s former VP of policy and legal affairs, Brendan Schulman, had forewarned against this eventuality months ago.

For David Benowitz, head of research at DroneAnalyst, the writing was on the wall.

As drone industry expert Bobby Sakaki explains, Skydio was losing money on every consumer order, hence the refocus on defense and enterprise. “But this is disappointing for many Skydio customers, such as myself,” says Sakaki. “The reality is that the enterprise drone market is still extremely immature and for a company that has raised $500 million to attempt to ‘own that entire segment’ is ambitious and likely will have a lot of headwinds.”

New Skydio drone launching next month

Now, as Skydio focuses its attention on enterprise platforms, it’s worth highlighting that the company is expected to unveil a new enterprise drone at its first-ever user conference, Ascend, which is planned for September 20, 2023.

According to Sakaki, Skydio’s new commercial drone is based on a next-generation NVIDIA GPU, which is not yet released. And this should enable the aircraft to offer more advanced features and likely better obstacle avoidance — which may finally allow Skydio to prove more useful during nighttime operations as well.

Further, the drone is expected to have swappable payloads and a flight time of over 45 minutes. And the drone’s communication with the remote controller is also expected to be more robust courtesy of Qualcomm, though it will continue to leverage a Wi-Fi-based protocol.

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