2021-05-05

The drone market has grown steadily and continuously over the past several years. The technology is here to stay and is becoming more prevalent across numerous industries. But 2020 was a unique year due to Covid-19. Overall, respondents even felt that the changes in business models triggered by the lockdowns would actually have a positive impact on the drone industry in the long run.

On average, the companies grew by 15% in personnel, which corresponds to an increase of 11% of the total drone industry workforce.

In the field of software, the average increase of drone companies was the highest, namely by 20%. At the same time, this segment was the only one which saw a decrease by -0.4% in total workforce. Within the software segment, companies in the fields of flight planning, fleet and operation management and developers of UTM systems grew more strongly than those involved in data analysis.

The software sector is followed by hardware companies, which recorded an average increase of 18%. This was primarily brought by larger drone companies. As a result, the total number of new employees was also significantly higher at 16%. Within the hardware segment, passenger drone manufacturers grew particularly strongly. These saw large investments in the last two years, which allowed them to grow rapidly. Commercial drone manufacturers grew at about the industry average at 14%.

Companies from the service sector were only able to grow by an average of 11%, which corresponded to an increase of 8% in the total number of employees in this sector. Here, it was the larger drone companies that tended to show stronger growth. There was also a lot of volatility in the service sector. While some companies in areas such as consulting and advisory or marketplaces for drone footage grew much below average, other areas such as news, blogs and magazines performed significantly better.

In general, it can be said that drone companies in 2020 have developed positively despite the pandemic. Whether the year would have been even better without Covid-19 and the average growth of the companies would have been higher than 15% cannot be fully judged. But there were also other positive effects for the drone industry: First, there was an increased focus on certain drone applications, which created pressure to adapt them more quickly, and second, new applications, within the realms of “Remotization” were created.

Source: https://droneii.com/drone-companies-and-the-2020-pandemic?utm_source=email&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=drone-companies-development-2020&utm_content=read-blog&utm_term=continue-reading-button&mc_cid=591e3f5c9a&mc_eid=5e20b07eb5#1525106654181-a2b63cd6-e0c31607949574406

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