United States

Germany

South Korea

Spain

United Kingdom

India

Australia

Switzerland

France

In a post-pandemic show of resiliency, the responses indicate the negative impact of the pandemic's affect on the global drone industry is reduced, with a large number of  companies reporting that it had no impact on their business, or did not result in layoffs and a drop in demand. While there are still some lingering effects, the responses show marked improvement in business operations from the prior two years.

Response Allocation

Drone applications can be broken into two separate orientations — drone service providers (DSP), or business-internal services (BIS). DSPs are third-party service companies whose business is to offer drone services to clients from all types of industries such as energy, construction or agriculture. BIS are mainly companies operating drones in-house and do not offer services to third parties.

Not surprisingly, the most applied use of drones among all companies in different countries is photography and filming. Next are mapping and surveying, and then inspections. 

Segmenting the responses and comparing the results with those in the 2021 Barometer, the largest increase in response was in the service segment (from 69% to 83%), with overall 33%  coming from drone service providers. Responses from hardware manufacturers decreased from 10% from 24% in 2021, which may be due in part to the lack of participation from China, and Japan is more of a service-intensive market. Software responses were unchanged from 2021, at 7%.

Drone Operations

The survey question on drone operation methods is somewhat different this year; thus there is no comparison to last year. The most relevant findings are:

• Photography & Filming is the most applied method among the companies in different industries, with 48% for BIS and 33% for DSPs;
• Mapping & Surveying ranked second at around 30% for both BIS and DSPs;
• Inspection is the method that DSPs applied more than BIS in different industries, with 21% for DSPs and just 8% for BIS; 
• The shares of the remaining methods were Localization & Tracking, Delivery and Spraying & Dispensing, which are between 3% – 5% for both DSPs and BIS.

Why Adopt Drones?

In surveying reasons to adopt drones, the report looks at how the industry responded in terms of "very important" and "quite important". 

The top reasons considered "very important":

• Improving work safety (41%) 
• Saving time (35%) 
• Improve quality (33%)

And "quite important":

• Saving time (21%)
• Improve quality (20%)
• Improve safety (16%). 

A caveat here is that "saving time" also received the highest amount of responses for "not important" (10%). There are graphs in the Barometer that show the specific results of the responses.

Pandemic Effects

Overall, the negative effects of the pandemic on drone business operations of the companies surveyed has largely subsided:

• Drop in demand: reduced to 33% (2022) from 35% (2021) and 43% (2020)
• Production/operation shutdown: reduced to 15% (2022) from 21% (2021) and 33% (2020)
• Staff layoffs: reduced to 9% (2022) from 16% (2020) 
• Reorient business model due to pandemic: reduced to 22% (2022) from 
• No impact on business: increased to 31%  (2022) from 19% (2020)

Resource Allocation

To see what drone companies are investing their time and energy in, participants were asked to prioritize their resource allocations over the next 12 months. Resource allocations focused on the areas of marketing and sales, staff development, product development, finances and funding, and other. The other category included developing partnerships, international cooperation, facility expansion, business development, etc.

Top priorities are marketing and sales, followed by staff development. Marketing and sales have received top priority over the past four years, and marketing has tripled in importance since 2018. This might be attributed to two reasons:

First, the need for companies to showcase their products physically at shows and events, particularly after not having been able to do so with pandemic restrictions. The drone industry is highly innovative and exploratory, and companies had to invest a lot more on marketing in order to showcase their products. 

Secondly, the need for companies to shift marketing focus from hardware and software, to more on their USP (unique selling point), which requires that companies prioritize their communications and marketing efforts. 

Staff Development – The  next highest priority after marketing & sales is staff development. The drone industry is growing and innovative, necessitating the need for companies to hire qualified  personnel and invest in staff development needs. 

With the highest priority being marketing at 33%, the importance of product development has dropped significantly. In 2018, hardware development was priority for 26% of respondents, down to 12% in 2022; and software development was at 32%, now at 16%. 

Finances and funding has shown a slow increase over the part four years, but has remained fairly steady overall. 

The 'Other' category received lower prioritization for the drone industry from the global participants.

Driving Factors in the Industry

It is widely known that the commercial drone industry is of necessity highly regulated. Thus, the top market-driving factor according to survey participants is rule-making authorities. Although the percentage share is lower than in previous years, a new factor was added this year that affects the distribution and lowers the percentages for responses from the previous years. 

The market-driving factors, in order of importance, are rule-making authorities, drone manufacturers, operator/drone-as-a-service provider, software manufacturers, drone association, organizations of safety concepts for drone design and operation, and other.

The report identifies several insights about all of the key factors:

Clear roadmaps and regulatory frameworks have become the key focus for everyone who makes, sells, uses, or is in any way involved with drones. Companies need regulations in place to scale their business within the commercial drone space, while operators need to know what is or isn't allowed and how to go about carrying out all sorts of activities. Whether it's inspecting infrastructures, delivering goods, or even flying people, regulatory bodies will remain in the spotlight for the development of the industry.

Slightly behind regulators, we find both hardware  and operators/DSPs, which are those who directly make or operate drones. As is mentioned in other sections of the 2022 Barometer, the drone industry has matured to a point where drone operators have become increasingly more important. So we can expect this pattern to continue in the coming years.

This year we also added drone associations to the list of most important market-driving factors. As can be seen in the results, they are perceived as the fifth most important market driving factor, ahead of JARUS, ASTM and other organizations for safety concepts. Drone associations have become an increasingly important factor to understand a country's unique drone market and they can also help companies come together for lobbying or motivating rule-making authorities to establish necessary regulations sooner. This can also explain why safety concept organizations are less influential, since they are mostly relevant for advanced operations and the majority of operators find the current system as sufficient.

Market driving factors in "other" category include customers/enduser, adoption of BVLOS, technology applicator, etc.

Complete report by Drone Industry Insights, portions reprinted with permission.

DRONEII.com is the leading market research and analytics company for commercial drones. Their core business is to create new knowledge in the field of unmanned systems. Their comprehensive understanding of the commercial drone market combined with a global view enables them to create industry reports and bespoke market studies. Combined they have more than 40 years of experience in manned and unmanned aviation and other relevant industries.