Anyone who likes to do some research into the "age old" debate between Satellite, Aerial, & Drone images are welcome to do so against historical HC forum posts. But as far as I can recall, the way that Nearmap is getting their current aerial images sit squarely within a "goldilocks zone" of quality vs capture cost vs update frequency. This implies that Nearmap is giving the best "bang for buck" as far as offering to a scalable number of users, the best aerial images at the lowest viable costs and highest update frequencies.
Any past, present, or future competition will need to win NOT ONLY on image quality alone, but also provide this service to the masses, on demand, on time, and at a competitive cost.
As we all know, Nearmap's patent HyperCamera and backend processing systems are their secret sauce. So even if civilian aerial drone photography was allowed everywhere and everybody allowed drones to buzz above houses, buildings, & streets, I still believe this is unlikely to hurt Nearmap's business model. Just think about it, if anyone is going to mimic Nearmap's services in the future (& heck let me just discard all their competitive advantage relating to having an extensive set of historical images, all the obliques, all the Big Data, all the AI, all the Data Analytics Insights, and even all the extensive 3D Surface & Mesh Data Models that Nearmap would have no doubt perfected in the future) and lets say we just focus on 2D photo images, I still fail to see how this can hurt Nearmap's business. After all, are we now assuming in some dystopia future (and after everyone has allowed drones to randomly buzz everywhere) there will be a rise of professional civilian drone operators or companies that are willing to fly hundreds and thousands of drones simultaneously across large populated areas frequently and then uploading and somehow magically and flawlessly stitching all the hundreds of thousands of images into a single mosaic canvas just like what Nearmap has already achieved over 10 years ago? Is this the future drone competition we should all be worried about ? Also, when the time comes, who is to say that a future Nearmap can't take advantage of using these drones once they've proven to be more effective in capturing better aerial images?
Anyway, for those who have their doubts, just examine the current Spookfish offerings, forget about drones being a threat, Spookfish have already captured & stitched up the images to most of the populated Australian cities. But despite having a similar 2D product being offered at a lower price point, they have yet to capture a significant critical mass to 'hurt' Nearmap. Spookfish is struggling to market their low cost "No data limit" aerial images, they are struggling to win new customer accounts, and they are constantly chasing the tail of the de facto industry standards that "Nearmap" is setting.
I believe whenever we start to think that Nearmap's business can be easily 'hurt' or duplicated by anyone (or anything) taking photos flying in the sky (or in space), we are grossly underestimating the massive "first movers", "market leading", "industry disrupting", & unique technological, people, historical, & process orientated competitive advantages that Nearmap truly possesses.
Expand
