At that end, Huawei, the big brother of communication, just announced that it will enter the new track for building cars; Here, technology rookie DJI launched a brand-new Baojun KiWi EV that cooperated deeply with SAIC-GM-Wuling, and it was officially unveiled at the Shanghai Auto Show that opened yesterday.
This can't help but make people feel that building a car is going to start "person to person"! No matter what line they have been engaged in, the giants seem to be scrambling to squeeze into the "window" of smart cars.
However, it is understood that DJI's routine of making cars this time is actually the same as Huawei. The so-called "deep cooperation" actually means that the new Baojun KiWi EV is equipped with DJI's intelligent driving system, and the cooperation between the two parties is not carried out by purchasing parts.
Compared with the cooperation between DJI and Wuling, what makes Bohu Finance puzzled is why this "first brother" who is used to flying in the sky chose to run on the ground instead of flying. In which direction will DJI develop in the future?
0 1
Fly to the "top" drone market
When it comes to DJI, it is inseparable from drones; Speaking of drones, you can't leave DJI.
After the establishment of 15 years, DJI has jumped from a private house in Lianhua Village to tens of billions. Even the Wall Street Journal, which rarely praised China's technology enterprises, took the initiative to label DJI as "the first China enterprise to become the world's leading technology consumer goods pioneer".
Who is DJI?
Back in 2006, a student who just graduated from HKUST and barely got a C in his graduation design was recommended by Li Zexiang, a professor of robotics in our school, and was able to continue his postgraduate study for two years.
During graduate school, he and two classmates took the raised HK$ 2 million and went to Shenzhen to rent a house and start a business. Finally, because of frequent truancy, he went to graduate school for two years and studied for five years before getting his degree.
He is the founder and CEO of DJI, Wang Tao.
DJI was just a small studio at first, with no business model, just making drone accessories. For more than two years, DJI has been running a small workshop.
The person who gave Wang Tao the idea of the whole drone was actually a New Zealand agent. 20 10 He told Wang Tao that he could sell 200 DJI balance rings a month, but 95% of his customers installed balance rings on multi-axis planes. This made Wang Tao begin to reflect on the development direction of DJI: continue to sell accessories or make the whole machine? If the whole machine is made, is it a fixed wing, a helicopter or a multi-axis?
In the end, Wang Tao decided to listen to his heart and chose to be multi-axis. "I am a product manufacturer. I just want to make the product well and let more people use it. "
By 20 12, with the mature technology accumulated in the past few years, DJI has all the elements needed for a complete UAV: software, propeller, bracket, balance ring and remote control. Finally, the "DJI Genie" was released on 20 13 and 1, which successfully incited the civil drone market. Subsequently, DJI basically achieved the same speed as the mobile phone industry in product iteration speed. Released once a year, Genie 2 and Genie 3 came out one after another, and the series of Wu and Jade received rave reviews.
Today, DJI has occupied 80% of the global consumer drone market, holding more than 70% of patented technology, with a valuation of more than 654.38+066 billion yuan. In 2020, the list of unicorns in China ranked seventh on TOP 100. DJI is also the only China technology giant that monopolizes the global market. It is even often compared to the "Apple" of China by the industry, but the player who can compete with this "Apple" has not yet appeared.
Similar to Huawei's experience, DJI was once included in the so-called "entity list" by the United States on the grounds of "protecting US national security" to "control" the company's import and export to the United States. However, in the face of US sanctions, DJI directly increased its tariff by 65,438+03% and transferred it to consumers in the North American market. Even so, the sales of DJI in the North American market have not fallen, but have risen, and even the US military is still using DJI drones.
In fact, no one can shake DJI's leading position in the UAV market, but the problems brought by its leading position have begun to surface.
Today, drones are still a niche market. Because for most consumers, the demand for drones is not so strong and the practicality is not strong, only a few people will become drone users. In recent years, although DJI has successively introduced mini drones with more affordable prices and more convenient carrying, it still cannot stimulate the growth of consumer demand from the root.
Invincibility is really a very lonely thing. Because DJI has no competitors with equal strength, the popularization of drones has gradually become a bottleneck.
According to IDC 2065 438+08, the global consumer and enterprise UAV market is 9 billion US dollars, and the average annual growth rate is expected to be about 30% in the next five years. Based on this calculation, the overall size of the UAV market in 2020 will be about 1, 526,438+0 billion US dollars. According to Gartner's prediction, this number has dropped to11200 million dollars, of which at least 50% belong to industrial drones. This means that the market for consumer drones is further compressed.
Wang Wei, who has been deeply involved in the field of drones for many years, seems to have a hunch. 20 16 he said in an interview that the drone market is close to saturation and DJI revenue will reach 20 billion yuan.
02
It is not easy to survive because of internal and external attacks.
In fact, in addition to the "ceiling" crisis of drone sales, DJI is still a "sandwich biscuit".
On August 7, 2020, a news of DJI's layoffs14,000 people spread all over the network, and DJI fell into the center of public opinion.
Subsequently, Xie Kandi, DJI's public relations director, said in a circle of friends: "Considering that DJI has14,000 people, according to this statement, there is no one in the company. I suggest the bullet fly for a while. " It turned out that the misunderstanding was caused by media mistranslation. The original words are "the company is considering' slimming' all its 14000 employees", instead of laying off all these 14000 employees.
But the truth of DJI's layoffs is by no means groundless. According to the laid-off employees, DJI has made great efforts to "slim down". The sales and marketing team in Shenzhen headquarters has been reduced from 65,438+080 to 60, and the team in the consumer market has also been similarly reduced. In addition, DJI's video production team has been reduced to three people, while South Korea has abolished its marketing team of six people.
"Specifically, I started sorting out my work years ago and laid off some redundant people. For example, there used to be two people doing a job, but if the job can actually be done by one person, then one person is considered laid off. However, R&D is cut less, because the working saturation of R&D is relatively high and it is difficult to compress. "
DJI told employees that they were fired because the COVID-19 epidemic hit sales.
In addition to this reason, DJI also realized that its structure became unmanageable on 20 19. According to insiders, the root cause of mass layoffs is management confusion. Everyone in this circle knows that the management of DJI is really a mess and inefficient In particular, the 20 18 major corruption incident exposed the regulatory loopholes of DJI in the supplier introduction decision chain. The incident also caused DJI to lose 654.38 billion yuan.
During the epidemic, Wang Tao, the founder of DJI, once said that the company faced enormous risks and challenges: First, more than 90% of passenger planes were cancelled, and the supply of all cargo planes was tight. The monthly freight rate is increased by 8 million; Second, due to the trade friction and epidemic situation between China and the United States, the risk of supply failure of overseas suppliers of the company has increased.
But as a technology enterprise in China, does the overseas market really have that great influence on DJI?
DJI has revealed that 80% of its sales take place offline, and the sales ratio of its products in overseas markets and China markets is 8: 2, of which 40% are in North America. It can be seen that DJI relies heavily on offline and overseas markets.
Although the domestic epidemic situation has gradually stabilized, the foreign epidemic situation continues to be severe. Shops are closed, outdoor entertainment is suspended, and the unemployment rate is soaring, while drones are mainly used in movies, tourism, outdoor and other scenes. You can imagine the impact of this wave on DJI.
In addition, since DJI was included in the "entity list", the US government has been wary of DJI for a long time. On June 5438+ 10 this year, the Pentagon banned DJI's drone fleet for security reasons. DJI also said that the decision was made for political reasons, not software defects. Previously, DJI was caught off guard by the sudden interruption of supply of UAV technology suppliers in Silicon Valley.
The reason why DJI is compared to a "sandwich biscuit" is that in addition to the overseas trade being impacted by the epidemic and politics, DJI has also hit the south wall at home and within the company.
Although drones were included in one of the key development directions of the national strategy last year. However, for a long time, China has no clear legal provisions on the use and management of civil drones, and most areas have implemented temporary regulations.
On the one hand, compared with the rapid growth of the industry, the regulatory policy is relatively backward. "Black flying" incidents such as unmanned aerial vehicles entering public and sensitive areas without permission, accidentally falling, affecting the normal take-off and landing of passenger planes, and colliding with tall buildings have occurred from time to time. Therefore, more and more cities begin to delimit the no-fly zones, and these zones are getting bigger and bigger, and the height of the no-fly zone is basically only about 120m.
On the other hand, in order to let drones "fly" into the homes of ordinary people and lower the threshold of aerial photography, DJI once built a Mavic Mini drone with a weight of only 249 grams. Because according to the regulations of the Civil Aviation Administration at that time, drones over 250 grams need to be registered in real names. However, just last June, 5438+065438+ 10, the Civil Aviation Administration adjusted the regulations of this UAV, requiring that the take-off weight of the UAV should be less than 250g, the flying height should not be higher than 50m, and the speed should not exceed 40km/h. In other words, the weight of the UAV meets the requirements, but it cannot be regarded as a micro UAV because the flying height and speed exceed the requirements. If it is a light drone, it still needs real-name registration.
Under the internal and external attack, if DJI doesn't stop the loss in time, the snowball will roll bigger and bigger. Today, DJI's income has exceeded 20 billion yuan. In addition to the UAV business, DJI is also actively deploying other businesses, such as imaging system equipment, educational information consulting business, etc., but none of them can support the valuation of UAV of 654.38+066 billion yuan. At present, the most urgent thing is to find a new field that is big enough and has enough imagination space to achieve its own revenue breakthrough.
03
The ground has more room for imagination than the sky.
Different from other new car-making forces, DJI has always been steady and low-key, and the style of "posters exist as soon as they are released" is also applicable to this smart car.
As early as six years ago, DJI conducted a hot search on Dai Lun Ricardo, the person in charge of Tesla's autonomous driving. And since then, news about DJI's entry into the field of autonomous driving and the development of unmanned vehicles have emerged constantly.
However, for many years, DJI has kept this matter secret. Later, it was discovered by netizens that unmanned vehicles were tested in a "secret base" in Shekou, Shenzhen, further confirming the rumor that DJI will cooperate with OEMs to enter the market for autonomous driving.
At present, the new forces of vehicle production can be divided into OEM and ODM. Among them, OEM is commonly known as OEM, that is, brand manufacturers do not directly produce products, but use their own core technologies to design and develop new products and control sales channels. Specific processing tasks are entrusted to other manufacturers of similar products through contract orders. ODM production means that after a manufacturer designs a product, it may be seen by other enterprises in some cases, requiring the latter's brand name for production, or slightly modifying the design for production.
Obviously, both Huawei and DJI cut into the car track with OEM production mode.
As mentioned above, DJI urgently needs to find a new field to support its huge scale. At present, autonomous driving is naturally more imaginative than the drone market. According to estimates, the scale of the autonomous driving market will be 84.4 billion yuan in 2020 and will reach 225 billion yuan in 2025. This figure is only for the domestic ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance System) market, and there will be greater possibilities in the L4-class autonomous driving field with a broader "money" path.
More importantly, DJI has a certain starting advantage over other players. Technically, the perception part is still the most difficult problem to solve in today's autonomous driving. In the past, DJI has accumulated rich experience in the research and development of UAV products, and technologies such as automatic hovering and intelligent obstacle avoidance have been applied to UAVs for many years. As long as the application scenario is transferred from drone to unmanned driving, the technical difficulties can be quickly overcome.
In recent years, Wang Tao, founder and CEO of DJI, has been secretly trying to change the positioning of DJI. When the "Genie 4" UAV was released on 20 16, the title was "Welcome to the era of computer vision", and then the description of DJI changed from "flying camera" to "flying robot". Wang Tao did not limit DJI to the field of drones, but he hoped that DJI would become an artificial intelligence company.
Throughout the product development history of DJI, it generally starts from subsystems and then gradually develops into finished products. Whether it is flight control system, aerial unmanned aerial vehicle, aerial suspension pan/tilt or handheld pan/tilt, according to the existing system products, Bohu Finance predicts that DJI is likely to start building the whole vehicle in the future. However, as a "small Huawei", DJI is expected to wait and see for three years like Huawei.
04
label
In the past, Tucki, an automobile company, wanted to "go to heaven", but later DJI, who built drones, wanted to "land". One is to tell new stories, and the other is to continue telling stories.
However, as far as the current form of building a car is concerned, not everyone can stay in the high-risk, long-cycle, low fault tolerance and high-risk automobile field. Although Chinese consumers have a great demand for new energy vehicles and a good prospect, there is still a "Matthew effect" in consumers' cognition of new energy vehicle brands, in short, those who are only familiar with the top flow. At this time, Internet cars have been listed one after another, and traditional cars have transformed into new energy sources. For a time, the market was so crowded that no one wanted to get off the bus and had to be squeezed out. Letv in Jia Yueting and Gree in Dong Mingzhu are examples.
As for whether DJI can finally make a car successfully? Bohu Finance still dare not draw a conclusion. However, intelligence and electrification will be the general trend in the future, and DJI should be able to occupy a place in the market with its excellent strength.
Reference message:
65438+ 1 100 million Euronet: DJI: "sharpening the knife" unmanned vehicle
2. Venture Capital Club: Wang Tao and his DJI.
Everyone voted for this country: DJI's drones fought back beautifully under the sanctions of the United States!
4. Quantum Bit: Exclusive | The DJI unmanned vehicle was first exposed, and the executives dug from Tesla left.