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European UAV Players - Do They Have What It Takes To Capture Future Global Opportunities?
Frost & Sullivan, Dec 2003
Growing Demand Helps Narrow Gap between European and American UAV Markets
With unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) expected to better suit future requirements, its global market is poised for phenomenal growth. Despite the level of UAV performance increasing dramatically, it continues to be well below mainstream customer needs, and applications are yet to reach maturity. Since UAV technology still needs improvement, UAV manufacturers need to integrate and develop several components simultaneously, to garner market share.
This Frost & Sullivan research analyses and forecasts future opportunities and markets for UAV applications in the military, civil and commercial sectors. It also aims to identify key European participants and strategies for them to capture global opportunities.
Strategic Alliances and Core Expertise to Drive European Market
Future battle space requirements are likely to focus on the kind of capabilities a high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) UAV can deliver such as electronic intelligence or target acquisition, says the analyst. By joining forces, European manufacturers can make use of the United States' competitive advantage and save significant amount of time. Moreover, European countries have core expertise in aerospace and defence sectors that can be transferred to the UAV industry. This, along with their good internal and external industrial relations, is likely to boost the European UAV market.
The challenge in moving to the commercial market lies in making clients visualise the attractive value proposition for their business. To achieve this, manufacturers need to move closer to the market and interact with clients and offer innovative strategies to capture the market.
End-User Education Vital for Commercial UAVs to Take Off
Many potential users are under the misconception that UAVs are too expensive, hard to operate and not available as ready solutions. The fact that they are not yet certified to fly in civil airspace adds to the negative perception. Users need to be made aware of the long endurance, interoperability, cost-effectiveness and the best intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities of UAVs. Manufacturers also need to spare no efforts to educate users on other environmental issues such as wildfire monitoring, illegal fishery and oil spill discovery, which can efficiently be monitored by UAVs.
Civil legislation, increasing awareness and needs in homeland security, certification, applications' investment and R&D cycles, market awareness/acceptance and reliable cost/benefit studies are critical factors for the success of this industry. Once end-users are made aware of the benefits of UAVs, these barriers are expected to be removed and the UAV market can only head for steady growth, concludes the analyst.
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