Sony and ZMP to sell Drone Services - Why Aerosense makes sense if Sony Smartphone are Drone Processor Boards

The Drone Industry is shaping up to be an exciting one in the US of A, even as the FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) rules are still very restrictive as noted in my blog article entitled “FAA's Regulations for Drones - How UAS Benefit American Economy despite Restrictive FAA Regulations by 2016”.

So it's not surprising to discover that Sony, a company with no background in aviation, has decided to toss their hat into the ring as reported in the article “Sony Is Launching A Drone Business To Provide Data Services To Enterprises”, published July 22^nd 2015, by Jon Russell, Techcrunch. 

They've partnered with Japanese robotics and automation company, ZMP, to form a separate company called Aerosense that plans to official start business in August 2015.

Sony and ZMP from Aerosense – Reselling Drone Services as Drones are everywhere

Strangely enough, they don't plan to sell Drones as noted in the article “Sony to Swoop Into Drone Market  for Business Customers”, published  July 22, 2015 By TAKASHI MOCHIZUKI, The Wall Street Journal but rather to offer Drone related services:

1.      Aerial Surveillance

2.      Cadastral Mapping Services

3.      Plant Inspection services

They'll be able to provide these services by leveraging the power of their Cloud Servers and expertise in designing Camera electronics to provide these cutting edge services. Thus they’d be doing all the heavy lifting and taking the upfront cost of Drone ownership from the potential client. 

This suggests that their potential clients may be Corporate and Enterprise Customers; a few examples readily come to mind:

1.      Agriculture

2.      Construction

3.      Mining

4.      Oil Exploration

5.      Telecoms 

6.      Town Planning

So is this a good business model? Initially yes.

But as Drone prices fall and Drone ownership in terms of maintenance becomes easier among Enterprise and Corporate clients, they might be willing to purchase Drones as well.

Sony and ZMP to sell Drone Services - Aerosense makes sense if Sony Smartphone are Drone Processor Boards

I suspect that providing a service was their original plan for the Aerosense partnership. They might expand into the business of making Drones as well.

Google and Amazon are already making inroads into developing autonomous Drones for package delivery as explained in my blog article entitled “Amazon’s Prime Air Patent – How Swarm Intelligence pilots @Amazon Autonomous Drones via White Spaces Network with Call Center Agent Personal Touch”.

If they do, So would achieve greater marketshare by forming a partnership with members of the Aerospace Industry as suggested in the article “Sony takes flight with Drone joint venture”, published July 22, 2015, by Don Reisinger, CNET News.

This means partnership with such companies as such as Boeing, McDonald-Douglas, Airbus and even NASA who have a Prandtl-m Drone in mind for a Mars survey mission in 2020 as explained in my blog article entitled “@NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center Prandtl-m Drone – Surveying the Red Planet for Human Colony as the More the Merrier with Two Drones”.

Google has already partnered with NASA along with Amazon to develop a Low-altitude Traffic control system for Drones as reported in the article “Google joins NASA and others to work on Drone Traffic Control System”, published July 25, 2015 By Trevor Mogg, Digitaltrends and “Google Wants a Piece of Air-Traffic Control for Drones”, published July 24, 2015 by Alan Levin, Bloomberg.

For regular folks selling Drone modules based on their smartphones that can then be programmed and be built into Camera Drones would be more profitable as opined in “Sony’s next big thing is camera drones”, published Thursday 23 July 2015 by Samuel Gibbs, The UK Guardian.

This as there is more money to be made from selling Smartphone as the processing board in a Drone as well as the replacement components than the one-off sales of pre-built Drones.

Hoping to see Drones being designed by Aerosense in August 2015 along with their Service-based model!