Recently, the state officially implemented the first national standard “N/T 3213-2018 Agricultural Drones Quality Technical evaluation Specification” for agricultural drones. In the document, the standard puts forward requirements for the quality and inspection methods of the drone. For example, the flight accuracy of the autonomous control mode is not more than 0.5m, and the flight path must be measured by a high-precision RTK positioning system.
During the process of the drafting of this standard, DJI has been participating in all aspects.
As everyone knows, DJI is an absolute leader in the field of drones. As long as drones are mentioned, it will never be able to circumvent DJI, especially in the field of consumer drones. However, it should be noted that compared with the carnival of the consumer drone market, DJI is not unfavorable in the agricultural drone market. Because DJI’s fame and brand can't offset the impact of “late”. Before DJI released its products, the domestic agricultural drone market has already emerged a number of players, such as Hanhe Aviation and XAG.
As far as the current market situation is concerned, after the market competition in 2017, XAG has become the recognized as the NO. 1 in the subdivision of agricultural drones, and even DJI has a sense of crisis.
For product update, although XAG also began selling drones, its product updates have not been complained by customers. Unlike DJI's “complete machine update” approach, the company adopts “modular update”, and the updated new products can be compatible with the previous generation products, thus reducing the cost of customers such as dealers. From the perspective of product selec and cost, DJI's approach is not cost-effective. In this regard, the dealer's choice is clear.
For drone operation, DJI’s agricultural drone will collect data for some planning before the operation, but in the specific operation, it also needs human monitoring and operation, and its operational advantages are more reflected in balance and stability.
On the whole, XAG provides a complete set of services, while DJI provides a set of products and technologies.
There is still a lot of room for unmanned plant protection operations in China. At present, the number of agricultural drones in the domestic market has exceeded 10,000 units. Among them, in terms of quantity, DJI UAVs account for about 60%. However, for the agricultural drone market, which is still in its infancy, the quantity is sometimes not the only criterion. In this market, currently, DJI has not had so many absolute advantages. This is why, as the No. 1 in the UAV industry, it has not recognized as the NO. 1 in the agricultural drone market.
