Since 2016, the whole market and product reliability of agricultural UAV have developed greatly. From 2018's situation, the entire industry's sales are no less than 30,000 units. Such a figure is far beyond the limits of current possible government subsidies. This means that the overall user market has begun to accept agricultural drones as an operating tool, recognizing its effectiveness and efficiency. So, as a relatively new farm machinery, what is the limit of its growth and the ultimate market?
This question has two aspects, one is how much will be the agricultural UAV’s overall sales? Another is what the final market structure will look like? Let's make a concrete analysis of this:
01
Overall sales of agricultural drones
At present, China's cultivated land area is about 2 billion mu, according to 40% plant protection operations completed by agricultural drones, that is 800 million mu.
Agricultural UAV
As the representative of large plots of land, the state-owned farms can only achieve an average operating area of 500 mu per year. Well, we calculate according to the 1000 mu of cultivated land served by each plane, taking into account the factors of mountainous and unsaturated operations. The final market capacity is more than 1 million.
△ 2006-2015 China agricultural machinery year-end ownership scale
In addition, the number of large and medium-sized agricultural tractors increased by about 400,000 a year by 2015, according to the table above, while the market for tractors fell sharply in 2016-2018, according to the latest market data, proving that the market is close to saturation. At the same time, compared with the single-day operation efficiency of the tractor and the aircraft, a medium-horsepower tractor can work about 80 mu, and a UAV can operate normally in the range of 250-300 mu. So after occupying 40% of the plant protection market, the total number of aircraft should also be around 1 million. At current aircraft quality and turnover rate, generally speaking, aircraft that can be used for three to five years are very stable in quality. Without taking into account the dramatic increase in aircraft quality, and the overall annual turnover rate should be around 20%, or 200,000 units a year.
02
Final market structure
There are four types of market structure: complete competition, monopoly, monopoly competition and oligopoly.
From a consumer's point of view, the most desirable is complete competition, while producers mostly want to see monopolistic markets. My judgment is that the market for agricultural drones will eventually form an oligopoly market for below reasons:
1.From the product point of view: From the real R & D capabilities, manufacturers with the real investment in the whole system R & D can be counted. As an electronic product, the marginal cost of a substantial portion of the aircraft's components is extremely low. If only relying on the outsourcing of standardized parts, it is bound to bring great cost disadvantage. This disadvantage will become more apparent as the overall sales volume of the industry increases, because manufacturers that have previously invested in research and development of core components, such as flight control, can share the cost of research and development with more machines, thus occupying the market at lower prices and forming a virtuous circle. Manufacturers that do not have their own complete systems are constrained by the profits of the supply chain Management, being unable to keep up with the rhythm, thus losing the market. In addition, the manufacturers that develop their own whole system can adjust their products quickly according to the needs of the market, so as to quickly iterate out those manufacturers who are subject to the supply chain. This advantage is in the stage of rapid development of agricultural UAVs, which is also extremely important.
2.From the market point of view: Any of the first echelon manufacturers can be in the national market cake, eating their parts. From the historical experience, the final sales distribution of traditional agricultural machinery also verified this result. It is only when the products and prices are very different that the advantages and disadvantages of each manufacturer will be obvious. In general, there will be at least 5 manufacturers who will have a considerable market share.
3.From a demand point of view: From the current product point of view, there are several obvious needs: automatic, semi-automatic manual, fruit trees (many kinds), mountain / tea, hill, etc. Obviously, a product or a company can't meet all the needs in a short time, so there will always be other manufacturers who will step into a certain field and do better.
From the above analysis, the author believes that China's agricultural UAV market will eventually form a total of more than 1 million units and an annual turnover of more than 200000. There are more than five different agricultural drone manufacturers competing oligopoly market. agricultural drone
