We are reaching the end of the year 2022 and it is a good opportunity to analyze how this global UAS industry is evolving. It is notorious that, little by little, drones are taking positions and presence in society and in the industry. Perhaps for many the speed of growth is less than the expectations that were had years ago and we could even say that the predictions about the size of the market have always been higher than the reality of what had been happening year after year.
We can diagnose why this circumstance occurs in various ways, but there are two aspects that I think are worth highlighting, one endogenous and the other exogenous. On the one hand, any new (and novel) activity that breaks into the market always presents ups and downs and variations at the beginning that have nothing to do with the offer itself, but rather are typical of a necessary adjustment between the different forces that govern the markets, such as substitute products, new entrants, acquired habits and customs, reactions to change, technological uncertainties, etc., which influence each case differently, but which alter diagnoses, introducing factors that they are hard to predict both ways, some positively and some negatively.
On the other hand, an endogenous aspect of this sector that has a direct influence and that has not been taken into account by the new players, in its full dimension, is that the aeronautical or air transport industry, where UAS operations are framed, is possibly one of the most regulated sectors of the economy. If we also introduce the circumstance that we are facing a new air transport with new technologies but that has to coexist with traditional aviation, it can only happen that the regulatory advances that govern UAS operations evolve at a pace marked by the evidence that security moves with perhaps exaggerated margins for some, but necessary for the legislator, who will reduce them as the sector provides proven evidence of adequate security.
But there are aspects of the market that do attract our attention beyond its global growth and it is how activities are redistributed between the different jobs that are carried out with UAS and the way that companies opt for these services.
In a recent study carried out by DRONE INDUSTRY INSIGHTS, it provides a very curious fact that, beyond being a quantitative data of what is happening in the market at a global level, is an element that adds a circumstance that can alter market forces, for constituting a new vector to take into account in the coming years and that may be constitutive of a more detailed analysis in another blog.
We refer to the circumstance that in some of the most widespread tasks at present and which have a greater role in the distribution of the total UAS market, such as, mapping, topography, photography and filming, a greater development and growth in the internal departments of companies that require these services, than the growth of companies that provide them.
However, this circumstance does not occur in the same way, but quite the opposite, in the tasks of inspection and industrial surveillance.
This could be a trend that is consolidating and that only operations with really specialized UAS are gaining importance in companies that provide external services, or perhaps it is just a temporary circumstance that is more due to what we mentioned before than the variations of a market still in turbulent phase. We will be attentive to these developments.
