Drone market statistics, analysis and forecast

Most countries consider the UAV market and related development and sales as one of the key components of GDP growth. The drone market value is estimated at 22 billion USD in 2020 and is expected to grow almost twice by 2025 ^[1]. This is mostly related to the recent R&D and technology progress, once the implementation of the tasks requiring a high level of autonomy became possible and affordable.

At the moment, we somehow observe in many developed countries saturation of the drone operators for popular tasks like video filming, movies, in general, those requiring RC. Yet the market opens for fully autonomous systems, and it is also possible, because of the ongoing regulations and standardisation on the use of the air space by autonomous UAVs, including Europe-wide standardisation (see the chapter on regulations).

Interestingly, the Fortune Business Insights reports on drone software market size to be around 6bln USD by 2027 (1.2bln USD in 2019). As the driving factor, the report mentions increased adoption of the AI (Artificial Intelligence) in both drone operations and data processing, grabbed by UAVs ^[2].