Amazon Sells Photography Drones

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 13, 3:51AM EST · Published Sep 7, 9:15AM EDT

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Amazon Sells Photography Drones — © courtesy of Amazon.com Inc.

In early December 2013, Amazon.com Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) CEO and founder Jeff Bezos demonstrated his company’s new drone. In theory, it could be a means of delivery of products to the home. Now that the FAA has approved wide use of drones, Amazon’s shot at next-age delivery is much closer to fulfillment. Amazon doesn’t just spend money on drones. It makes money on them. It recently promoted a new photography drone, which is part of an army of the devices sold at Amazon.com.

Some of the drones Amazon sells cost less than $100. Others are close to $10,000. The most recently promoted photography drone costs $677.33. As is usually the case, Amazon promotes a Prime membership, which pulls the price down from $999.

The DJI Phantom 3 Advanced Quadcopter Drone with 2.7K HD video camera comes in four packages, one of which includes additional batteries and another a hard case. Neither is very impressive. The drone is.

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Among its features:

up to 2.7K HD video recording with fully stabilized 3-axis gimbal

Lightbridge digital streaming allows live viewing of 720p video (full resolution video is simultaneously recorded on the internal micro SD card)

Vision Positioning system allows stable flight indoors

Included flight battery and rechargeable remote controller means this system is ready to fly out of the box

DJI Pilot app for iOS and Android allows live viewing and complete camera control

The machine has a range of 1.2 miles. It has an auto pilot feature and 23 minute flight time.

While all its features are impressive, they do not approach Amazon’s own drone. It flies as up to 400 feet, can run at 55 miles per hour and has a 15 mile range.

Another difference between the Amazon drone and the DJI Phantom 3 Advanced Quadcopter Drone is that you cannot buy the Amazon drone on Amazon.com.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.