Is 3DR finished? Read this

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According to the article 3DR continues to lay off employees. They are moving toward corporate/industrial drone use.
Decide for yourself.
Drone-maker 3D Robotics cuts jobs, refocuses on corporate market

My brother is a business expert and I asked him to research 3DR and give me his opinion of their future viability. Here is his response:

I have been waiting for their quarterly report but it apparently still has not been filed. From the articles I have seen, they moved to commercial since others cut their drone prices quickly and 3D was slow to follow and lost customers. Basically it looks like the consumer market is too competitive for them.

There have been a few articles about their new drone and enhancements to the SOLO system. You probably have seen them (one about a week ago). In any event, they still are losing money and are going to lay off a few more employees. The articles are upbeat about the company but I am always suspicious if they are still losing money and employees. They seem to have some strong backing from bigger folks so someone thinks they are on the right track. Drone sales seem to be climbing and the FAA apparently just approved night flights for commercial drones.


I will continue to watch folks like Amazon and other who are looking at drones for delivery purposes. I expect they will use them internally to move things from one building to another.


I will let you know when they file their quarterly report. Losing money is not a big issue for a new company but the trend will need to stop sometime. Laying off employees is never good business so I don’t know what their plan is but someone is paying attention to costs so that is good.


I would keep an eye out on the articles they put out and see what they say. I would assume they will continue to service their “premier” drones since they make good test beds for their commercial work but after a time, I would expect them to exit the consumer arena since it appears it is too saturated with other offering the same or better products.
 
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That's an interesting report and your brothers insight lends weight to a future direction of 3DR. I note however that the SiteScan software uses the Solo Drone which possibly could indicate that at least this consumer Drone would have some legs if it is needed commercially.

The system has a software-as-a-service monthly subscription model, which integrates Autodesk software, where using the 3DR Solo drone, businesses can upload aerial images, analytics and other data to the 3DR cloud.

Either way I think Solo as a consumer product has some life left in it yet, but in this day and age 12 months is a long time for technology developments and anything could happen by 2nd quarter 2017. I've only had mine 6 months and despite the improvements or updates 3DR drip feeds us (which I love) there's no denying it's a fiercely competitive market.

Case in point - I bought the Solo and Gimbal separately in Australia and the Gimbal was approximately $780.00AU You can now pick them up for $399.00. Kinda smarts!
 
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More news straight from the CEO:

Reprinted with permission from The Robot Report:

3D Robotics is closing its San Diego facility, has reduced its staff at its Berkeley headquarters and in Austin, and acknowledged that co-founder and president Jordi Muñoz left the company at the end of 2015.
The latest staff reductions follow more extensive layoffs that took place at the end of 2015 after 3DR shifted its manufacturing operations from Tijuana to Shenzhen in order to economically mass produce their new Solo quadcopter which was intended to compete with DJI's Phantom line of quadcopters.
In an interview with Xconomy's Bruce Bigelow, Chris Anderson, co-founder and CEO, described the changes as something that was part of 3DR’s plan all along.
"This is a consolidation we’ve been working on since before October of last year. As we shifted from the DIY era to consumer and to enterprise customers, we ended up with a different organization each time."
Anderson omitted talking about the problems 3DR faced with their Solo drone. The Solo started off with a flashy launch video that introduced the product about a year ago. DJI, at about the same time, released their new Phantom 3 with a list of features that surpassed the Solo. Because of producing and warehousing drones in China, 3DR made too many Solos particularly given how fast competitors were dropping prices and flooding the market. They built up a massive and costly inventory. Furthermore, a fully equipped Solo was priced too high for the market. 3DR was forced to lower prices to just $799 plus $199 for the gimbaled platform (down from the initial price of $1,000 and $400).
dji-phantom-4-system_300_200_80.jpg
Keeping up the pressure, DJI cut its Phantom 3 prices ahead of its launch of the Phantom 4, an even smarter and more sensor-laden drone all-inclusively priced at $1,399.
In another interview with MarketWatch, Anderson said that 3DR was moving to the commercial market due to heavy competition in the consumer drone marketplace.
"DJI is doing great, it’s because they are moving so fast, it’s forcing the others to adapt. Some companies are adapting by leaving, and others are adapting by moving upstream to the enterprise, which was always our plan. And [that move] is just accelerating right now."
3DR will now be focusing more narrowly on enterprise customers that are interested in using drones for such projects as utility line and pipeline inspections, and construction site inspections. As part of that move, 3DR announced the release of its Site Scan aerial analytics platform earlier this month. The technology enables corporate customers to conduct inspections and scan work sites with the Solo smart drone, and transmit the data to the cloud for processing and analytics. The system has a software-as-a-service monthly subscription model, which integrates Autodesk software, where using the 3DR Solo drone, businesses can upload aerial images, analytics and other data to the 3DR cloud. The system uses a tablet from Sony, a GoPro camera and starts at $3,249 for the hardware.
Anderson remains CEO, and Jeevan Kalanithi, 3DR’s chief product officer, becomes president. 3DR had ramped up to more than 350 employees but, with the current layoffs, will be down to below 80. The company’s former president, co-founder Jordi Muñoz, left the company last year as part of the ramping down of 3DR’s operations in San Diego and Tijuana.
"By making job cuts and refocusing, 3DR currently has enough financial runway until the second quarter of 2017 without having to go back to investors," Anderson said. “We want to make sure we have a good long year of runway,” he said. “You don’t want to have to go back to the market every six months. This is a moment when the investors want to see a profitable, lean operation, and we are doing that."
 
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