Author|Zhao Chenxi
Edit|Utada
Title Map | Drone, Vision China
Farmland has become the third most powerful imagination of drones.
More than 30 years ago, Yamaha used remotely controlled drones to farmland, creating the first UAV farm operation model in Japan and the world. In the 1990s, Japan began to promote the application of plant protection drones in rice fields. Today, drone farm operations have become the main force of plant protection in Japan.
In China, taking the Bazhou area of Xinjiang, the Jiamusi area of Heilongjiang, and the Jingzhou area of Hubei as an example, from 2017 to 2019, plant protection drones are also rapidly spreading. A drone user from Heilongjiang, in 2019, the single-machine area reached 61,044 acres.
We know that drones are divided into consumer and industrial grades. The consumer market is highly competitive. Many companies have moved from consumer to industrial markets, or have been rooted in industrial markets since the very beginning. Such as agriculture and forestry plant protection, logistics, security patrol, aerial mapping, oil development, etc. are all application scenarios of the industrial-grade drone market.
Among them, the agriculture and forestry plant protection was regarded by many startups as a market with great commercial potential, because the penetration rate of plant protection machinery in China is only one place compared with the penetration rate of plant protection machinery exceeding 50% in the United States and Japan. number.
However, from 2016 to the present, hundreds of drone companies that existed in the agricultural plant protection market, after experiencing the tide of closure, now only a few scattered. And Dajiang and Feifei are the so-called “final winners” in this field.
Even insiders believe that “agricultural plant protection” has become the battlefield of these two companies.
Overview of the entire agricultural and forestry plant protection drone market in China, after the education period, shuffling period, and development period, this vertical track has undergone some subtle changes this year.
The market is sinking
The 2019 annual conference of Extreme Flying Technology announced a set of interesting data, which made the plant protection user group a simple division according to different age groups. In 2019, the growth rate of users after 80s and 90s was the same as last year, and basically did not grow. After 60, 70 users increased; 5After 0, the user grows linearly.
This phenomenon, on the one hand, illustrates the problem of population structure in rural markets, namely rural migration and aging. Many rural young people have come to big cities to seek opportunities, and the proportion of people over 55 years old in rural areas has increased. On the other hand, the drone market has begun to sink. In the past, young people have a strong ability to accept new technologies, mechanization, and intelligence. Now, after 50, users have begun to accept the concept of agricultural intelligence.
The founder of Feifei Peng Bin believes that the average age in rural areas is between 46 and 60 years old, and the age of drone users has become larger, indicating that products are getting deeper and deeper into rural areas. Of course, the challenges for drone manufacturers are also growing, such as ease of use, product prices, after-sales service, and deeper channel capabilities.
Peng Bin discovered through the classification of UAV flight defense costs in the past few years, first, the cost of purchase, the cost per acre of land purchase is 2 yuan, the second is the cost of battery use per acre, and the cost of equipment maintenance. The overall cost is falling. “From now on, the fastest cost reduction is actually the maintenance cost. The battery cost is the slowest in the industry. It has not fallen in the past few years.”
The reduction in overall costs has resulted in changes in the entire user community. Some users often choose to purchase themselves after comparing costs. The user base has gradually shifted from the past plant protection team to planting large farmers and agricultural machine operators.
“Under the influence of the deeper and deeper channels, the proportion of large-scale farmers and agricultural operators has increased this year, accounting for nearly half of the total user base.” Peng Bin further told Tigers that the application of drones in China The scene has a very high penetration rate in paddy fields and cash crops in cash crops.
Daily’s innovative brand leader Xie Weidi also felt this change: “From the market insight, more and more 60, 70 will try our products. At the same time, with the national plant protection machine subsidies The actual purchase price of the plant protection machine is also constantly decreasing. Therefore, we also find that more and more large growers will buy our products for their own use, and some farmers will join our customers to purchase our products for personal use. .”
In addition, drones have been sprayed, batteries, and industry standards have been developed, and there have been some new developments this year. From October 23 to 25, the fourth UAV Spray System Standard Working Group (ISO/TC23/SC6/WG25), co-organized by Dajiang Agriculture, discussed the ISO standard for plant protection, in particular, the difficulty of applying technology. And other issues.
“Shenfei is already one of the standard manufacturers of plant protection drones, and this standard has been released. The mainstream drone companies in the market are participating in this standard, and we are also one of the key participants.
We are the developer of spray quality, including allowing the spray to be more precisely controlled and flying smarter. A group standard finally arrives at the national standard and there may be an adaptation process that takes a while. It will become a group standard first, and then it will become a national standard in the future. It may take another year or two. “Peng Bin said to the tiger.
The depth of the price war
The 2019 annual conference of Extreme Flying Technology released a new product, the ultra-flying XP 2020 agricultural drone. In the naming rules, the ultra-flying XP 2020 did not continue the previous P series. Peng Bin introduced that the extremely flying XP 2020 body type has achieved the limit that a single person can move, and can carry 20 kg.
“The flying structure of the XPF 2020 is further strengthened and more compact. Even if one arm is dropped, it can continue to fly. It also provides three loads ranging from 12L, 16L and 20L, depending on the region. Use different sizes of medicine boxes and particle boxes.”
In terms of spray width and efficiency, in the case of 6 m/s and 800 ml/mu, the spray area of the fine spray area is 4.5 meters, the efficiency is 145.7 acres/hour; the spray area of the fast spray area is 6 meters, and the efficiency is 194.3. Mu / hour.
More importantly, in terms of price, the overall price of the ultra-flying XP 2020 agricultural drone kit has been reduced by 20,000 yuan. Peng Bin told Tigers that the price of the last year was more than 70,000, and this year is about 52,000. This is due to the advantages of the supply chain and the cost reduction of developing new products.
“For example, the original surveyed pole with battery sold 6700 yuan, today is more than 2000 yuan; the battery originally had to back four, now two is enough, save two batteries of money; in addition, buy a charge with The function of the generator can save 10,000 yuan. In essence, we reduce the price of the market with reasonable profits.”
Peng Bin stressed to the tiger that the extremely flying XP 2020 set price is 2,000 yuan cheaper than the friend T16 suit.
The “friends” here refers to Dajiang.
In 2015, Dajiang, a city in the consumer market, will reach out to the agricultural plant protection field and launch a new MG-1 for 52,999 yuan. In 2016, MG-1S will be released, which is lower than the price of MG-1. Ten thousand yuan, the price is 42150 yuan; in 2017, the MG-1S Advanced is launched at 29,999 yuan; in 2018, the T16 with higher performance is introduced, and the price of the single machine is 31,888 yuan.
Peng Bin believes that because Dajiang occupies 60% to 70% in the consumption field, it can subsidize 1 billion yuan from aerial photography to agriculture. Even if it does not make money today, price cuts are normal business practices.
But for the price war, Dajiang denied it: “There is no price war now, it is the price of the Ministry of Agriculture. And many upstream technologies are our own, large-scale manufacturing, cost control, Xinjiang is definitely stronger. .”
In fact, while continuously absorbing and stimulating sensitive markets with “low” prices, Dajiang has further expanded its market share through contract machine plans, channels, distributors and plant protection teams.
According to the data released by the polar flight, as of September 20, the total operating area of the flying unmanned aerial vehicle reached 310 million mu. The agricultural data of Dajiang shows that as of September 6, the cumulative operation in China has exceeded 200 million mu.
Talking about the rapid growth of the opponent in the field of agricultural drones, Dajiang Xie Yi said to the tiger: “The total operating area of the flying flying drone is a global summed up in four years. We are a region in China. Data from the beginning of the year until now.”
“Dajiang’s four-year global total should exceed 500 million mu, the domestic market share is close to 70%, and the flying is close to 20%. The insiders are already very clear. These cannot explain what the problem is.”
From this point of view, Dajiang and Feifei have had a positive confrontation in various aspects such as price and market channel expansion.
However, although they are inevitable in the short-term confrontation, the two companies emphasize that there are big differences in the long-term routes, and they will embark on different ways of realizing a certain node.
“(Dajiang and Feifei) is not the same idea, even the development ideas are different, you can understand two products. For example, we use robust control, and the fly is PID control (robust Refers to reliable and stable; PID refers to a control algorithm, that is, proportional integral differential control algorithm, the two are not comparable), completely in both directions.
In addition, Feifei hopes to transform agricultural data companies to avoid competition, and we will stick to the equipment and the platform itself. “Thank you to the tiger to sniff.
Xie’s example, the drone itself is the platform. The MG series is usually a platform in agriculture. The T16 launched last year is the second generation platform. The first generation is the flying sprayer. The drone platform and model are made; the second generation is a mathematical model that redefines a platform around the spray operation.
Just like Apple builds software ecosystem through hardware, Dajiang attracts drone software providers to integrate on its mobile applications and software development kit SDK through its dominant market share.
But Xinjiang and Apple are not the same. Apple sells its own development results through channels to Apple users to make money, while the developers in DJI itself have customers, their customers have additional needs in using DJI drones, and then develop technical support solutions for customers, Customized to complete the specified task.
Even, many developers in Dajiang are the operating departments of large companies’ drones. For example, engineers from China Southern Power Grid use the DJI SDK to transform a set of software for their own tasks, and then share experiences within the Southern Power Grid.
At the 2019 Annual General Meeting, a strategic plan was announced to integrate the drone business into the four steps of “smart agriculture construction”.
The first step is to build a smart agricultural infrastructure; the second step is to develop, intelligent agricultural equipment drones, robots, spray series; the third step is to connect the agricultural Internet of Things of land, crops, producers and consumers; Fourth, based on the data generated by a large number of devices and connections, the artificial intelligence AI landed in agriculture and became a data service provider.
Gray also revealed some cooperation with Alibaba and Huawei Cloud. Alibaba provides reliable and stable cloud services. Huawei Cloud has more support for hardware and software connections. Speaking of the use of data, Peng Bin said that a large amount of data sent back to the background will allow the drone to fly better, for example, to determine the user’s habit of using the battery to guide the battery design.
“Including all the details of the entire R&D and production process, not only to help the customer itself, but the final product is also a good result from cloud computing.”
Daily is very different from the extreme flying for the commercialization of agricultural data.
Xie Yan firmly said to the tiger, “Data is not a business in Dajiang, this is the principle.” and Feifei emphasizes that the company collects data within a normal use range, and they hope to use the data to help Enterprise optimization scenarios, changing the way users work, can ultimately help users to increase revenue and reduce operating costs, these three dimensions to think. “
“There are many dimensions of data, such as flight altitude, speed, sensor conditions, etc. But we areKeep the most basic morality of the company, and do not do evil or chaos. “Peng Bin said.
It is worth noting that Peng Bin, the founder of Feifei, said in an interview with “Daily Economic News” in early October this year that data services are still in the early docking state, and the exploration of data in the fly includes financial External companies such as institutions and agricultural pesticides provide data and conduct business cooperation to help these institutions understand farmers’ needs.
For example, Feifei hopes to pass the data back to the cloud for processing and analysis, and use this data to improve pesticides, fertilizers and other products for partners.
In fact, after comparing the two drone companies, we found that there are differences in hardware technology and business models. In particular, it is impossible for any drone company to touch data, but how to commercialize data. It may be the biggest fork in the development direction of the two companies in the future.
It remains to be seen how the two companies will move out of the differentiated path in the field of agricultural plant protection drones.