Article at a Glance

The Chinese drone company DJI pioneered the “ready-to-fly drone” market on its own and has secured more than 70 percent of the global drone market. It noted that the early drone market had separate components such as software and hardware, and by integrating them into a single system and developing those components in house, it introduced ready-to-fly products that significantly lowered prices and attracted both enthusiasts and general consumers. By releasing new products quickly, on roughly a six month cycle it widened the gap with latecomers and built DJI’s competitive moat. The company pursues extreme perfectionism down to the tightness of a screw, and by recruiting excellent engineers through high salaries and a free organizational culture it has built strong technological capabilities. As competition for technological hegemony between the United States and China intensifies and security risks grow due to the possibility that drones could become weapons, DJI is expanding its product portfolio into shooting equipment and autonomous driving systems based on the technologies it has secured through drone development in order to distribute risk and diversify revenue.

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‘Apple of drones,’ ‘The Garden of Eden for engineers.’

These are phrases often attached to the Chinese drone company DJI. Like Apple it has built its own ecosystem that organically integrates hardware and software, and the meaning is that engineers find it a good environment to work in thanks to high salaries and a free organizational culture. The reason DJI is compared to Apple can also be seen in its growth strategy. DJI has taken a different path from existing Chinese manufacturing big tech companies such as Huawei and Xiaomi. Rather than a “fast follower” approach that pursues markets built by advanced countries by leveraging low labor costs and price competitiveness it is closer to a “first mover” that pioneered the ready-to-fly drone market.

According to the global research firm Research and Markets, DJI is known to have more than a 70 percent share of the drone market, and a drone media outlet Loyalty Drones stated that DJI’s market share in the United States is about 80 percent. From the beginning, it has targeted the global market and about 80 percent of its revenue comes from overseas, which differentiates it from other Chinese companies that look overseas after relying on a strong domestic market as their base. Its performance is also remarkable. The Chinese tech media outlet 36Kr reported that DJI’s revenue in 2024 was 50 billion yuan (about 9.4 trillion KRW) and its net profit margin reached as high as 40 percent. Wang Tao, founder and CEO of DJI, also emphasized in a past interview with the WSJ that “when Chinese companies released cheaper versions of products we pioneered an entirely new market.”

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