Consumer drone manufacturer Yuneec International confirmed on Friday that it would lay off an undisclosed number of employees in its Americas division.
According to multiple sources Yuneec is laying off 50-70% of their employees.
The company, which had received $60 million in funding from Intel Corp’s venture-capital arm, said it would “scale back our business structure to a secure balance between operational costs and revenue,” according to a statement issued by Yuneec.
“We concluded that we upsized operations faster than our growth required.” Yuneec is the latest in a series of drone companies to announce layoffs. Drone manufacturers 3D Robotics, GoPro, Parrot, Ehang and Autel all announced layoffs in the last 12 months.
Source: Market Watch
Yuneec is the latest in a series of drone companies to announce layoffs. Drone manufacturers 3D Robotics, GoPro GPRO, +1.05% Parrot and Autel all announced layoffs in the last 12 months.” MarketWatch
No-one welcomes news like this, but it is a timely reminder that sustainable growth comes when innovation meets market needs. Real innovation calls for serious intensity of R&D – in this market that means going way beyond upgrading what are essentially toys.
Most Drones companies so far have failed on the industrial (B2B) side to provide a serious innovation or understand and meet industrial clients’ needs.
The market will reap what it sows: the higher the investment is without real innovation, the harder will be the fall facing contenders in the B2B market. So many companies – who really should have known better! – have been saturating the media bandwidth with “fake news”, and hiding real technology innovators and solution providers from the investors.
It is to be hoped that, after few more company failures and scale-downs, investors will have a clearer view of the real future for unmanned industrial transport and maintenance. This is still without doubt the most exciting business sector to be in!
Like the computer industry in the 80’s and 90’s, the field was littered with “casualties” Those companies that can go the full “length of the field” will be the companies (like Aeryon Labs), to invest in.
Most of the drones on market are mainly taking pictures. We are working on drone sent out to eradicate mosquito and agricultural pests. Other drone products we are working include sending drone to clear rooftop snow and pollinate plants. http://www.Roboticvectorcontrol.com