What are the Largest Areas of Growth for the Drone Industry?

David Benowitz is the Head of Research for DroneAnalyst, which released a report digging into how the industry performed during COVID-19 and how much hardware was sold in 2020 versus 2019.

“While a lot of people, of course, saw a lot of interest in delivery during COVID-19 — delivering medical devices, etc. — and we definitely saw a lot of growth, we’re really interested to see that across the whole industry.

We’re looking at the markets that currently exist. We’ve seen tremendous growth across the whole industry, with hardware growing from about $2.4 billion USD in 2019 to a much larger $3.5 billion of hardware being sold in 2020.

And, when we start looking at these segments that have grown, the only segment that was hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic was creative professionals, because the film industry pretty much stopped production and, therefore, stopped purchasing drones, as well.

But we saw huge, huge, tremendous growth in consumer, which grew by more than 30%. Enterprise imaging was even higher than that when talking about public safety and industrial applications.

The No. 1 largest growing sector during COVID-19 was agriculture spraying. And, of course, we’ve seen these drones being used for spraying disinfectant for COVID-19, as well. But we’re also seeing the core business of agriculture spraying drones just really take off in Asia and elsewhere where regulations are much more relaxed and where the products are finally meeting customers’ demands.”

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Twitter – @MarketScale
Facebook – facebook.com/marketscale
LinkedIn – linkedin.com/company/marketscale

Follow us on social media for the latest updates in B2B!

Image

Latest

Revenue Cycle
Transformation Without Disruption: How Access Healthcare Is Rewiring the Revenue Cycle with Agentic AI
September 17, 2025

Hospitals are juggling shrinking margins and rising costs while denial volumes remain stubbornly high. In the revenue cycle alone, hundreds of billions are lost annually to preventable errors and inefficiencies—in fact, Access Healthcare CEO Shaji Ravi cites more than $250 billion wasted each year. Meanwhile, payers have accelerated their use of AI to adjudicate…

Read More
leading with intention
Making Meaning Out of Life’s Pause: Billie Whitehouse on Finding Strength, Setting Boundaries, and Leading With Intention
September 17, 2025

In June, Forbes profiled Billie Whitehouse, CEO and Creative Director of Wearable X, as she broke her silence about leading through a devastating health crisis. Diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at 27 while 22 weeks pregnant, Whitehouse underwent emergency surgery that ensured her survival, but came with the profound heartbreak of losing her…

Read More
Critical Care
Transforming the ICU Through Technology: Advances in Critical Care Telehealth Delivering Gold-Standard Care Anywhere
September 17, 2025

Critical care in the United States faces a mounting crisis. With a shortage of board-certified intensivists and younger, less experienced nurses filling ICUs, hospitals often struggle to provide timely, gold-standard care. Studies show that hospitals with board-certified intensivists in their ICUs see a 30% reduction in patient mortality, yet thousands of facilities still lack…

Read More
How to Scale Events Without Losing the Wow Factor
How to Scale Events Without Losing the Wow Factor
September 17, 2025

In this episode of Secured, host Mike Monsive, CEO of ASAP Security, reconnects with Idan Koren, CMO of Verkada, for a conversation about what it really takes to scale events without losing their impact. Idan shares how his team manages nearly 500 events a year—ranging from intimate gatherings to Verkada One, the company’s flagship…

Read More