Global flying drone shipments to grow 50% in 2020

Bengaluru: Worldwide shipments of Internet of Things (IoT) enterprise drones (defined as flying drones) will total 5.26 lakh units in 2020, an increase of 50 per cent from the previous calendar year, according to research firm Gartner, Inc.

Global shipments are forecast to reach 1.3 million units by 2023, it said. "The construction sector is an early adopter of drones, which causes construction monitoring to be the largest use case by shipments worldwide across the forecast," Kay Sharpington, principal analyst at Gartner, said.

"Shipments are estimated to reach 2.10 lakh drones in 2020, and more than double by 2023. Drones are taking over tasks such as site surveying and earthworks management as they are faster and safer to carry out with a drone than on foot," she said.

To save costs when surveying sites, the number of global construction employees per drone will decrease from 2,400 to 640 between 2018 and 2020, a Gartner statement said.

In the short term, most use cases will be based around surveillance and monitoring due to the technical complexity of other applications.

In 2020, the second and third use cases by drone shipments will be fire services monitoring and insurance investigation.

The insurance industry is the second largest use case by shipments with 46,000 drone shipments forecast for 2020. Shipments are expected to nearly triple by 2023, to reach 1.36 lakh that year.

"Drones are used to carry out inspections on buildings and structures after a claim has been made, to assess the extent and cause of the damage.

They can also be used to evaluate the type and condition of the building when providing an insurance quote," Sharpington said.

"Their benefits are valuable. For example, they reduce the cost of scaffolding, ladders and employee time and provide a comprehensive photographic record of the building condition," she added.

To survey claim areas at a lower cost, Gartner expects insurance drones will grow from one per 1.52 lakh people in 2018 to one per 72,000 people worldwide in 2020.