Sony Corp plans to offer commercial drone services targeting the construction, logistics and agriculture industries from the first half of next year.
The company’s Aerosense Inc venture is making automated drones to capture high-definition images and transmit them to the cloud for analysis, Sony told reporters yesterday in Tokyo. The jointly owned company with robotics firm ZMP Inc expects sales to total about ￥10 billion (US$83.2 million) by 2020, Aerosense chief technology officer Kotaro Sabe said.
Sony, whose Xperia smartphones have failed to gain a market share, is looking to find another use for its mobile phone and digital camera technologies in the nascent drone market.
The unmanned aircraft industry may be worth US$82 billion by 2025 in the US alone and has already attracted investments from Google Inc, General Electric Co and Qualcomm Inc, despite privacy and safety concerns.
“It’s difficult to expect growth in the smartphone business with smartphones alone, which is why we are looking at new opportunities such as this,” Sony’s mobile business head Hiroki Totoki said.
Drones drew scrutiny in Japan when an anti-nuclear power protester used one to deliver a payload of radioactive material to the roof of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s office in April.
The incident prompted the Japanese government to consider strengthening regulation of unmanned aircraft.
Quanta Computer Inc (廣達) chairman Barry Lam (林百里) is expected to share his views about the artificial intelligence (AI) industry’s prospects during his speech at the company’s 37th anniversary ceremony, as AI servers have become a new growth engine for the equipment manufacturing service provider. Lam’s speech is much anticipated, as Quanta has risen as one of the world’s major AI server suppliers. The company reported a 30 percent year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue to NT$1.41 trillion (US$43.35 billion) last year, thanks to fast-growing demand for servers, especially those with AI capabilities. The company told investors in November last year that
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