When people say their competition is boring, that spells trouble.
The web pages of the companies I sent are really to indicate that
a) there are major players in the US market beyond Eagleview,
b) there are corporations who have building equivalent or better hardware imagery capture,
c) the software solutions that NEA espoused are trivial in comparison to what is available and being developed.
The comment about a Drones is that they are a cheaper, more mobile, allowing for much great range of operational types. To ignore them is really another nail in the coffin of corporate success.
Nearmap is not a "disrupter", not in the sense of real innovation. NEA stating this is really pseudo intellectual marketing ploy for an organisation to define itself as an innovator. There is nothing in the NEAs arsenal that is either uniqueness or a recipe for success.
The constant talk of time variation is good, but neither unique nor a game changer. NASA has been doing this for years, and it relates to more environmental and agricultural domains. In these cases ultra high resolution is not something clients would want to pay a premium for. Moving the application to council checking if backyard spying seems to me to be ludicrous, and in the US would probably encounter a plethora of legal privacy disputes.
And this talk of solar work I find incredulous! This was mentioned in a couple of NEA interviews. Currently Google Earth is being used by many domestic solar supplies. 2 out of 3 provided quotations on my house using GE. I actually asked one providor if they use a Nearmap, and firstly they hadn't heard of it, and secondly didn't think it was warranted. To think that a providor will again go to the extra expense of high precision imagery is quite silly. Even bigger commercial groups, I just can't see it.
Going back to maybe the original argument I had. Stuart Nixon's argument had merit, especially when now considering what NEA "action plan" is. That would have been a real disrupter of functionality, maybe even bringing in a Google takeover. The current plan trivialises the idea he had.
NEA Price at posting:
54.0¢ Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held