The devices of the Phantom family from the Chinese company DJI have the most recognizable quadcopter design, which is imitated all over the world. Now, according to rumors, the manufacturer is going to permanently abandon the development of this family.
It's worth saying that this is more than just a rumor, as DJI Director of Public Safety Romeo Durscher said on the Drone Owners Network podcast last month, "Yes, the Phantom series, except for the Phantom 4 Pro RTK [a professional option for surveyors] has come to an end.”
Mr. Dürscher's answer was given to a question that has been on the minds of drone enthusiasts for some time: what happened to the Phantom 4? Because all versions of this last member of the Phantom family, with the exception of the commercial RTK model, have been out of stock for at least a month. Some retailers show these drones as discontinued.
And the other day, DroneDJ reported that the announced Phantom 5, which was supposed to get interchangeable lenses, was also canceled. But there is a small problem with all this: DJI denies the reports and previous statements are true. Speaking to The Verge, DJI Communications Director Adam Lisberg said, "This is Romeo Dürscher's mistake."
“Due to a shortage of parts from a supplier, DJI is unable to produce more Phantom 4 Pro V2.0 drones until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience and encourage our customers to use the DJI Mavic series as an alternative solution to meet their needs,” DJI said in a statement.
It is important to note that DJI has been offering the above explanation for five whole months - this is a very long shortage of components. “In terms of the Phantom 5 rumors, first of all, we never said that we were planning to release the Phantom 5, so there is nothing to cancel,” added Mr. Lisberg, who last fall in a conversation with DroneDJ that the leaked photos of the alleged Phantom 5 with interchangeable lenses were in fact just a one-off design for one of the clients.
All this is rather strange: if the manufacturer really wanted to sell drones of the Phantom 4 family, it would hardly have solved the problem of lack of spare parts in 5 months. In addition, developing a drone with interchangeable lenses, making lenses for it in order to release a single model for one client is extremely unreasonable and costly. Unless the client was a Saudi prince. And the curtailment of Phantom sales is quite logical in the light of the fact that the company has more compact folding devices of the Mavic family of the same class, which is in no way inferior (and in many ways surpasses) the capabilities of the Phantom. Why the competition of two families within one company?
However, it would be shortsighted for DJI to abandon its original iconic design and world-famous brand name, which in many ways has become synonymous with consumer drones. Therefore, it would be surprising if everything ended with the Phantom 4 Pro 2.0 and Phantom 4 RTK.
By the way, DJI is not doing very well this year. It is enough to remember related to cases of corruption that caused the company damage in the amount of more than 1 billion yuan ($150 million).
Source: 3dnews.ru