There are a lot of companies that offer aerial photography services (eg Fugro, Aerometrex)and state land authorities have many areas flown periodically as part of their charter of supplying the data to other govt departments (eg capital cities once per year, regional towns and cities every few, remote areas as required for special projects - basically never).
Nearmaps advantage is their ability to provide frequent data at a high resolution. Other companies can provide high freqency (eg from high flying planes or satellite sourced imagery) at the expense of quality (resolution), or high quality imagery at the expense of frequency (planes need to fly low and therefore need a great deal of flying to cover an area - it won't get done monthly.
Nearmap have a camera system that gets them a resolution required by their clients with less flying, and an automated system of processing allowing quick turnaround times and minimal staffing costs. Photogrammetric processing is traditionally fairly labour intensive.
I think satellite imagery currently has a US enforced ban on commercial satellites recording (or at least supplying) resolutions less than around 50cm. This may be dropped one day, but at this stage most of Nearmaps clients would be chasing sub 20cm resolutions.
NEA Price at posting:
29.5¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
