In a previous thread about this, the conclusion people came to is that there simply isn't any equivalent competitors. They are either comically expensive, of have laughably low feature sets comparatively.
Another datapoint to whether one can compete or not
SkyDio, a US startup, entered the market producing drones with object avoidance so advanced that it was far beyond what DJI offered.
Their consumer pricing was quite competitive ~ 1000, the drone was by far the best in the market. Nothing was even remotely as good as a Skydio at high-speed object avoidance!
It seems like the US government became interested and probably funded them in some capacity, and with that, they exited the consumer domain. They only sell drones to governmental agencies now.
> In March 2021, the company became a unicorn, becoming the first US company that both manufactures and sells its own drones to exceed $1 billion in value
Saying that that no one can compete with DJI is simply not true. You can't compete with these companies because each are probably heavily subsidized.
Drone technology, like chip technology is a national security issue.
Skydio had a gimmick, but camera, stabilization, range, radio and price were all worse than dji. There is a reason Ukrainians crowdsource donations for DJI even when their units get assigned Skydio drones funded directly by US DOD. DJI is simply better.
>You can't compete with these companies because each are probably heavily subsidized.
No. It's because they have much lower skilled labor costs. See how much it costs to hire an experienced mechanical, hardware, firmware and software engineer in the US vs in Shenzhen.
You can't make a competitively priced consumer appliance or electronics product in the west anymore that's competitive to those coming from Asia and still expect to make western profit margins. Your profit margins will either be too slim to stay in business or to afford to attract any talent, or you can choose good profit margins but then your product will not be competitive on the "free market".
Why do you think there are no western companies making phones, TVs or computers any more since 20+ years? Apple is the only exception now, but let's not forget that before them creating the iTunes and AppStore markets that made them wealthy today, they were months away from bankruptcy when they were selling just computers made to compete with cheaper PCs.
I think you are conflating two different things here: where you come up with ideas and where you produce the goods.
To stay on the topic of drones, Skydio is an example of a US startup that produced drones in the US, and for some applications, it produced better drones than an established and sophisticated competitor. Is every component in Skydio manufactured in the US, very unlikely ...
I am no DJI hater, I have owned multiple of their drones and I think their products are awesome of extremely high quality.
That being said, a SkyDio was light-years ahead of them when it came to high-speed object avoidance.
In FPV communities, DJI is considered the closed/proprietary ecosystem that locks you in. Even their product lines are not exactly compatible with each-other.
You can pick up Walksnail-protocol or HDZero-protocol goggles for ~$500 new, and HD 4k drones compatible with them like Caddx Gofilm 20 for $400 - and connect any controller which uses an open-source ELRS protocol.
Granted, all of the hardware is manufactured in China I'm sure - but the software is miles apart.
"The other early impact of these safety and geofencing features, though, is that DJI has become the only viable mass market drone manufacturer in the United States. There are DIY drones and racing drones, but the overwhelming majority of hobby drones on the market are made by DJI. Most of DJI’s main competitors are also Chinese. This is in part because geofencing and altitude restrictions made DJI drones more foolproof, easier to fly, and safer to use. Essentially, DJI made a better product than its competitors and now dominates the market. (There is one new hobby drone made by an American company, called the Blackhawk 3, but it has not yet found much of a market and most reviews say that comparable DJI drones are cheaper and better)."
"More powerful but more complicated drones like those made by onetime competitor 3D Robotics failed to find a user base, and that company no longer exists. Skydio, an American company that sells drones exclusively to cops and first responders, has fully shelved its hobby products. Consumer products from other drone manufacturers have similarly failed. This means that we are now in a situation where, if DJI is banned, there are few options ready to step in and replace it, because all of the companies that would have replaced it have utterly failed to provide the type of experience that the U.S. government demanded and is now upset about. A recent post on the Drone Girl blog [1], which has been covering the industry for many years, points out “There are no consumer drone companies in the U.S. worth talking about right now.”"
