[DataDive]

Another datapoint to whether one can compete or not

SkyDio, a US startup, entered the market producing drones with object avoidance so advanced that it was far beyond what DJI offered.

Their consumer pricing was quite competitive ~ 1000, the drone was by far the best in the market. Nothing was even remotely as good as a Skydio at high-speed object avoidance!

It seems like the US government became interested and probably funded them in some capacity, and with that, they exited the consumer domain. They only sell drones to governmental agencies now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skydio

> In March 2021, the company became a unicorn, becoming the first US company that both manufactures and sells its own drones to exceed $1 billion in value

Saying that that no one can compete with DJI is simply not true. You can't compete with these companies because each are probably heavily subsidized.

Drone technology, like chip technology is a national security issue.

[rasz]

Skydio had a gimmick, but camera, stabilization, range, radio and price were all worse than dji. There is a reason Ukrainians crowdsource donations for DJI even when their units get assigned Skydio drones funded directly by US DOD. DJI is simply better.

[mcphage]

> It seems like the US government became interested and probably funded them in some capacity, and with that, they exited the consumer domain.

Why couldn’t they do both?

[DataDive]

why compete in the consumer domain when Uncle Sam pays you not to

[mcphage]

Because that leaves a lot of money on the table for competitors to fund a business.

[Rinzler89]

>You can't compete with these companies because each are probably heavily subsidized.

No. It's because they have much lower skilled labor costs. See how much it costs to hire an experienced mechanical, hardware, firmware and software engineer in the US vs in Shenzhen.

You can't make a competitively priced consumer appliance or electronics product in the west anymore that's competitive to those coming from Asia and still expect to make western profit margins. Your profit margins will either be too slim to stay in business or to afford to attract any talent, or you can choose good profit margins but then your product will not be competitive on the "free market".

Why do you think there are no western companies making phones, TVs or computers any more since 20+ years? Apple is the only exception now, but let's not forget that before them creating the iTunes and AppStore markets that made them wealthy today, they were months away from bankruptcy when they were selling just computers made to compete with cheaper PCs.

[DataDive]

I think you are conflating two different things here: where you come up with ideas and where you produce the goods.

To stay on the topic of drones, Skydio is an example of a US startup that produced drones in the US, and for some applications, it produced better drones than an established and sophisticated competitor. Is every component in Skydio manufactured in the US, very unlikely ...

I am no DJI hater, I have owned multiple of their drones and I think their products are awesome of extremely high quality. That being said, a SkyDio was light-years ahead of them when it came to high-speed object avoidance.