With a new year come growing drone market size, new challenges, new market players, new use cases and new regulatory hurdles for the commercial drone industry. For this reason we’ve worked hard to develop our brand new updated Drone Market Report 2020 (get the full report here).

To mark the release of the new update of our annual flagship report, here are the most important market trends that you need to know about the UAV industry in 2020 and 2021.

The big picture, the most important figure to take away, is 42.8 billion USD. That is what the drone market size will be in 2025. From generating 22.5 billion USD in 2020 it will grow at a CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 13.8% to almost double that in 2025.

This fairly stable year on year growth – seen in our graphic – is also a reflection of the ongoing high investments and the consolidation of the commercial drone market.

It is a less optimistic picture than what we saw in 2019, but nevertheless shows that the commercial drone industry remains resilient in spite of emerging challenges.

The drone industry has matured from explosive and exponential growth to steady returns, increased adoption and a step up from the so called trough of disillusionment.

The Energy sector is the largest industry on the commercial drone market in 2020 and will continue to be so in 2025. However, the Transportation & Warehousing industry will continue to be the fastest growing.

This is partly because, as defined by the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), this vertical includes industries providing transportation of passengers (although air taxis still will not sell for some time) and cargo, warehousing and storage for goods, and support activities related to modes of transportation like inspection and maintenance of infrastructure.

While Agriculture and Construction currently follow energy as the top industries in the drone market, the growth of the Transport sector will mean that by 2025 it will be the 2nd largest industry within the market.

Currently, the national drone markets in USA and China currently dominate the commercial drone market – together their revenue makes up over two thirds of the global drone market size and this does not look likely to change in the foreseeable future. However, regional shifts in drone market dominance have been more common.

While back in 2018 North America was generating slightly more revenue than Asia, thanks to the growth of not only China, but also Japan and especially India (since the legalization of drones there in December 2018), Asia pulled ahead already by the end of 2019. The region will continue to build on this growth and be the leading regional market by some margin in 2025.

Few industries will emerge out of the COVID-19 pandemic unscathed. The global health crisis has resulted in a worldwide contraction of several markets as almost three months of respective quarantine in major economies has seen major rises in unemployment, slowdowns of supply chains and reduction in demand for goods.

However, it is important to note that the commercial drone has also already made gains during the pandemic – thanks to medical applications of commercial drones amongst many other automated solutions provided (mapping, surveying, broadcasting etc.) drone companies like Zipline and Wing have been able to deliver and scale their solutions quicker than previously expected.

As a result, the industry as a whole is likely to feel the economic effects of the pandemic, but certain portions of it might feel those affects very differently to others.

By 2021, the commercial drone industry will be selling 1,000,000 drone units per year. Looking at the growth between 2020 and 2025, unit sales will have more than doubled in this time period.

Notably, while overall drone unit sales will increase this will be down to commercial drone unit sales growth as private or hobbyist drone unit sales will decrease in 2020-2025.

For many more insights on commercial drone regulations, major trends that will impact the commercial drone industry and market dynamics that will shape the industry in the next five years, check out our Drone Market Report 2020!

Drone Market Report 2020-2025 also contains all of the detailed drone market data broken down by segment, industry, method, region, country and more in .xlsx form.