Posted May 24, 2022
By Ray Blanco
Drone Delivery may be Coming to Your State Soon
Drones have been around for a while now. Since their debut, the unique unmanned aircraft have been used across a huge variety of applications. Even to this day, drone adoption continues to grow rapidly among both consumers and companies. One industry that's leading drone adoption is the retail industry.
Drones stand to provide several useful applications for retailers, but drone delivery is the most well-known and apparent. Drone delivery is exactly what it sounds like, goods delivered to your doorstep by a drone.
While it may sound like a novelty at first, tech giants like Amazon, Alphabet, and more have praised it as the future of e-commerce fulfillment. Today, many major retailers and logistics companies across the globe are testing drone delivery services.
One such company is Walmart. Recently, the big-box retailer announced that it would be expanding its drone delivery services to an additional six states: Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas, Utah, and Virginia.
Within those six states, Walmart says it will be able to cover some 4 million households.
In a statement made earlier today, Walmart said it will be able to deliver over 1 million packages by drone each year in as little as 30 minutes to households in certain areas as the previously mentioned states. The service will debut with an additional $3.99 fee per delivery and the drones will be able to deliver packages up to 10 pounds at a time.
The service expansion is an expansion of Walmart’s partnership with DroneUp LLC, which began providing drone-delivery services out of Walmart stores in Arkansas back in November.
By expanding its drone delivery services, Walmart is positioning itself to compete against the speedy delivery times of competitors like Amazon and FedEx.
Drone delivery provides many advantages over traditional truck deliveries like reduced emissions per trip, lower delivery costs, and the ability to avoid traffic and road hazards. It also has a psychological effect on customers of ultra-fast delivery services becoming the norm.
But like any innovation of services, there are also a few issues involved. Perhaps the most glaring issue is the weight limit that the drones have… You certainly won’t be able to get a refrigerator delivered by a drone just yet…
Even with its limits, drone delivery is an exciting innovation in retail fulfillment that many people will benefit from. Waiting more than a day for deliveries may become a thing of the past if drone delivery sees more innovation and widespread adoption.
To a bright future,
Ray Blanco
Chief Technology Expert, Technology Profits Daily
AskRay@StPaulResearch.com