Move over, PlayStation: Sony gets into the drone business

Sony will offer drone services to businesses with a new joint venture launching in early August. 

|
Jamey Jacob/AP/File
An unmanned aerial vehicle, or drone, flies at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Okla., on Thursday, Dec. 12, 2013.

The company known for Walkmans and PlayStations is reaching a bit higher with its newest venture.

Sony announced Wednesday a joint venture with a Tokyo-based startup to start a drone subsidiary that will utilize technology from its mobile device division to market drone capabilities to businesses.

Sony and ZMP Inc., a company that specializes in autopilot technology, are set to launch Aerosense in early August, which will use drones to inspecting aging infrastructure and survey land that is difficult to access.

This type of drone activity is similar to that which is getting exemptions from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), says Kelley Sayler, a fellow at the Center for New America Security.

The FAA, which requires that hobbyist drones must be in sight of the operator and must stay below 400 feet, offers broader latitude to businesses, allowing commercial drones to fly on an ad hoc basis.

For example, farms can use drones for "monitoring crops, and oil and gas companies can use to inspect infrastructure, and those could fall under the health or safety regulations the FAA uses," Ms. Sayler told the Monitor. She estimates the FAA has been issuing around 250 exemptions a month, and that number is growing – suggesting that the US market for Sony's product is only going to expand.

"The FAA has a fairly good handle on the policies it has in place now – if anything they are too restrictive and the regulations have not been able to keep pace" with emerging technologies, or with the "more lax" European guidelines, says Sayler.

That may soon change, as the FAA proposed sweeping reforms in February to open up the application process for businesses to operate drones. It estimates 7,000 businesses could apply for drone permits within three years.

Sony, which posted a loss in fiscal year 2015, announced plans in February to shed the audio and video segments of its business, and double down on flagging performances in mobile and gaming, both of which fall under the umbrella of its devices division.

This new drone venture appears to be an extension of Sony's new investment in devices. The project is drawing resources from the company’s smartphone segment, according to The Wall Street Journal. The head of Sony’s smartphone unit, Hiroki Totoki, told the Journal that "the key to driving growth in these areas will be adapting Sony’s innovation in various technologies," including the cameras and sensors that will equip the drones.

Sensors are already lucrative for Sony, as they are standard hardware in all of Apple Inc.’s iPhones and all of Samsung’s Galaxy devices.

Other Internet and tech companies are jockeying for a place in the emerging drone market. Yamaha is likely Sony's biggest current competitor, as it already uses drones for commercial purposes, primarily inspecting crops. Amazon.com and Google are planning to use drones for package delivery. 

In robot-friendly Japan, where Sony is based, drone technology has gained traction, but a safety event earlier this year gave the government pause. In April, a man was arrested after landing a drone containing trace amounts of radioactive material on the roof of the prime minister’s office. The country is now considering tighter regulation.

Sony and ZMP will each own about half of the drone company. A Sony spokesman said Aerosense would sell services using drones but not the drones themselves.

Aerosense is the latest effort by Sony to adapt to the entrepreneurial mindset of tech companies large and small, says Mr. Totoki, the smartphone unit chief. He told the Journal he wants to turn the smartphone group into a "launchpad" for business ideas. 

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Move over, PlayStation: Sony gets into the drone business
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2015/0723/Move-over-PlayStation-Sony-gets-into-the-drone-business
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe