By the end of August 2019, DJI hadn't released a single drone all year. Was it leaving the drone market? I didn't think so. Here's how I read the situation back then, and why a leaked "Mavic Mini" looked like a game-changer.
A year without drones
In 2019 DJI gave us a stabiliser, a camera for the consumer market, an action cam, an educational toy robot. Lots of great products, but no drone. I think "why?" was the wrong question. We needed to understand what was going on in the drone market itself.
Competition was very high, and DJI had spoiled its customers with quality and great customer service. They knew they were the leader, and that it would take any other company a long, long time to take that away. So they invested in other markets that were waiting for them. The Osmo Action competed really well with GoPro, with its pros and cons, and the Ronin-SC, lighter and great for vloggers, gave them a lead there too.
Thinking it through
Up to six months earlier, DJI had every segment covered brilliantly: professional, consumer and the low-end starter drones. Meanwhile, the FAA in the US and the EU in Europe were bringing in new rules. So I think DJI was having second thoughts before launching another drone. Whatever came next had to live up to the standards they'd set.
I had already made a couple of videos speculating about a Spark 2, which probably would never be born. Then a leak appeared: a so-called Mavic Mini, like a Mavic Pro shrunk to Spark size, foldable, with a three-axis gimbal and a claimed weight of 245 grams. Under 250 g, it would fit the new FAA threshold and be a great fit for Europe, where it would count as the lightest category, with far less bureaucracy than flying a Mavic Pro or a Phantom. You'd still have some paperwork because it has a camera, but much less. The leak also talked about 4K and 1080p at 120 fps.
(Looking back: the Mavic Mini did arrive at the end of October 2019, at 249 g, but it shot 2.7K rather than 4K.)
Smaller, quieter, lighter
My prediction: DJI would not stop making drones, but instead of three, four or five a year, we'd see one or two at most, keeping the quality high. I felt we'd reached more or less the maximum image quality, so the competition would move to smaller, quieter and lighter. I had sold my Spark a couple of months earlier, and the idea of something that size that folds into a tiny case really excited me. I even daydreamed about a DJI phone or a DJI mirrorless camera with built-in stabilisation. How crazy would that be?
And yes, I apologised for my earlier wrong guesses. Everybody was speculating on the same leaks, and none of us got it right.