2023 Drone Stats: Most Drone Flight Hours by Country + Top Drone Manufacturers in the World

Want to know which country logged the most drone flight hours this year? What about the drone companies that grew the most?

New reporting from Drone Industry Insights (DroneII) shares insights into both, providing us some great data into where we’re seeinameg progress on the drone front around the world.

Let’s take a look.

And the Country with the Most Drone Flight Hours Is . . .

China by a mile.

According to DroneII’s Drone Utilization Report, China is by far the leader in terms of drone use across both VLOS (Visual Line of Sight) and BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) drone flights, with the U.S. a distant second.

The interesting thing about this report is that, instead of considering sales or production, it looks at whether drones are actually being used in the country. This is a great way to gauge adoption and general acclimation to drones.

Personally, I’m surprised the U.S. is so far behind China. Over the last few years we’ve seen aggressive adoption in both recreational and commercial sectors here, and I would have expected there to be less of gap between the U.S. and China.

But this report didn’t just consider flight hours. It also looked at:

• Number of commercial drones sold
• Number of drones being used for commercial purposes
• Total number of flights
• Total number of flight hours

The fact that China is so out in front when it comes to both VLOS and BVLOS flight hours could also help explain why DJI releases some drones only in China.

This year, we saw DJI release both the Matrice 3D, the DJI Dock 2, and the FlyCart 30 only in China.

Given the huge amount of usage in the country, it makes sense that DJI may want to test the viability of a product, both from a production standpoint and from a sales standpoint, before rolling it out to a larger market. (Of course, there is also regulatory complexity to consider between U.S. and Chinese markets—for instance, rules on flying BVLOS make it very hard to use the Dock in the U.S.)

The Matrice 3D and the DJI Dock 2 | Credit: DJI

Here are the major findings from DroneII’s utilization report:

• A global total of 7.6 million drone flight hours will be recorded by the end of 2023.
• Drone unit sales of commercial prosumers are by far higher than professional drones.
• Asia is the leader in terms of total flight events and flight hours. However, Oceania leads in terms of the average number of “flights per drone operator”. (Oceania includes Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and several other Pacific islands.)
• China is the undisputed leader in drone use for both VLOS and BVLOS operations, followed by the United States.

This year, China also rolled out new, stricter rules for drone pilots, including bans on non-Chinese drones. Maybe now we can understand why.

Learn more about DroneII’s utilization report.

The Top Drone Manufacturers of 2023

Here are the major findings from DroneII’s 2023 drone manufacturer report:

• DJI continues to dominate civil drones, followed by Skydio, XAG, Parrot, and JOUAV
• Insitu, takes the top spot for dual-use drones, followed by Schiebel, Edge Autonomy, Quantum Systems and IdeaForge
• There is a lot of movement and jockeying for position, with a combined 34/40 companies shifted position since 2022 within both of the top 20 rankings

Learn more about DroneII’s drone manufacturers report.

As you can see, DJI is a huge outlier in the report, leading the pack as by far the top drone manufacturer of the year in terms of both brand and company growth.

Second in place overall after DJI is Skydio, which exited consumer drone sales this year to focus exclusively on commercial opportunities.

[Related read: American Drone Companies: A Master List]

After that, we see XAG, the Chinese ag drone company, in third place. DroneII notes that XAG saw major growth abroad this year, expanding quickly in both Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Fourth place goes to Parrot, which has also dropped its consumer arm, and fifth goes to JOUAV, a newer Chinese drone company that opened a $50 million factory for producing drones this year.

Credit: DJI

The top five spots covered above are really for the whales—the relatively bigger companies dominating the drone industry. Another interesting way to look at the data is to consider which companies improved their rankings the most since last year.

Viewed through this list, the top movers from last year are:

• Autel Robotics—China, +7
• Delair—France, +5
• Percepto—Israel, +3
• American Robotics—USA, +3

Credit: American Robotics

How Were the Companies Ranked?

As you can see in the chart above, the two big factors DroneII considered are Company Growth and Brand Awareness.

However, we don’t have much insight into exactly how these factors were weighed. What we do know from DroneII’s reporting is that it looked at nuanced data points to form these ranks.

Writing for investors on why this report could be useful, DroneII notes that “growth and brand recognition that might not be immediately apparent from spreadsheets or text-based reports, facilitating more informed investment choices.”

But unfortunately we’re not sure if “growth” means sales, investment, opening new offices, new hires, or some mix of these. Most likely this withholding is on purpose. After all, DroneII has an interest in holding back the secret sauce behind how it reports so that it can’t be duplicated.