Safety concerns won’t prevent commercial drone manufacturers from seeing rapid growth this year, according to a report issued today by Juniper Research.
In the latest good news for the makers of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, or drones, Juniper said the agriculture and entertainment sectors will help boost drone sales for commercial use this year by 84 percent. In its report, titled Drones: Consumer & Commercial Applications, Regulations & Opportunities 2015-2020, Juniper predicts that annual revenue this year will reach $481 million, up from last year’s $261 million.
But Juniper doesn’t see anything to indicate the industry will have an easier time overcoming regulatory hurdles. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration wants tight controls on drones and this could limit growth.
Drones could crash into people, planes or helicopters. There’s also a potential for terrorists to weaponize the aircraft and use them to fly bombs into crowded areas, the firm noted.
Already, drones are being used for criminal purposes. Over the past year, numerous attempts were made to fly drugs, weapons and contraband into prisons. Just last Friday, Thaddeus Shortz, 25, was convicted for conspiring to smuggle drugs, pornography and cigarettes into a Maryland prison using a drone.
Because of security concerns, Dr Windsor Holden, the co-author of Juniper’s report, argued that “regulators would be extremely wary of allowing planned services such as Amazon Prime Air and Google’s Project Wing to be offered except as a means of delivering to isolated rural communities.”
Amazon has aggressively pushed the FAA to allow it to offer drone delivery, and claims Amazon Prime Air can safely deliver packages to customers. Google says it will begin delivering via drone sometime in 2017.
While the potential for drone delivery is making headlines, agriculture is emerging as the bigger growth area in the short term.
“Juniper expects (agriculture) to account for 48 percent of all commercial drone sales this year,” the research company said. “Here, UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) help save time and costs over other methods, such as walking fields on foot… Furthermore, the ease of use of a UAV created for the sector allows for more regular crop surveying.”
