Photo/Shetuwang

Nov. 5 (NBD) – China's drone maker Dà-Jiāng Innovations Science and Technology Co Ltd (DJI) announced the release of its new agricultural drone T16 at a press conference on Tuesday.

The Shenzhen-based drone company also launched a contract drone project which allows customers to pay part of a drone's charge and top up the account when placing operation orders. The project is now only applicable to the company's another agricultural drone MG-1P.

DJI's new move came shortly after it cut the prices of its previous agricultural drones twice.

According to DJI, it is rather early for the company to pursue market share and profits since the agricultural drones are applied in only about two percent of China's croplands. The goal of the Chinese drone manufacturer is to expand the whole agricultural drone market through relinquishing parts of the profits to drone operators and farmers. 

DJI aims to curb the profits and popularize the agricultural drone technologies, said Chen Tao, sales manager at DJI's division of agriculture.

Xie Tian, public-relation director of DJI, observed that an increasing number of crop protection teams have settled in the small areas where agricultural drone training is accepted and this brought even more fierce competition, causing a drop of drone operators' income. Therefore, more needs to be done to stimulate the market, he added.

DJI's decision on cutting the profits forced other agricultural drone makers to follow the suit, which will put the latter in a difficult situation, since DJI is able to control the costs with whopping profits from the consumer drones while other agricultural drone makers are not that lucky.

An agricultural drone manufacturer once told the media outlet Yicai that its profit margin dived to 10 percent from 45 percent three years ago.

It is predictable that in the future, the agricultural drone market may be larger but competitors in the market will be less.

Data revealed DJI now plays a leading role in the agricultural drone market as it does in the consumer drone segment.

According to Xie Tian, the sales volume of DJI's agricultural drones increased for consecutive three years from 2016 to 2018. Currently the drone company has 20,000 agricultural drones and it takes up around 67 percent of market share in the domestic agricultural drone market and more than 50 percent in the Japanese and South Korean market.

Moreover, DJI plans to invest 10 million yuan (1.5 million U.S. dollars) to set up 1,000 offline agricultural drone stores and another 10 million yuan to support the promotion and demonstration of applications of unmanned aerial vehicles in the agricultural sector next year.

Email: wenqiao@nbd.com.cn