Walmart And Drones: A Flight To Nowhere?
In the US market, the race for silver bullets continues at Walmart. Drones are flashy but inefficient and I don't see any path to widespread scale except in very limited scenarios. Target instead yawns and sticks to its knitting.
First the obvious - I doubt Walmart invested very much in DroneUp. Otherwise, it would be an acquisition - how much revenue could the whole company have? Single millions are the easy guess.
The whole thing reads like straight out of the Walmart PR team trying to recruit new employees - look how innovative we are! Don't you want to come work for Walmart?
I always look to innovation to solve the core problems, not scrape around the edges. That's the approach Target took. They took a massive question - what place do stores have in this eCommerce future, and how can we make eCommerce more profitable, and looked to solve both at the same time. That spawned dozens of innovations in their stores and supply chain that continue today.
It doesn't mean that Walmart is not innovating, but it is also not providing a credible story at the moment how this is going to make a big dent in the business.
Amazon after 5 years of investments has completed how many drone flights? Anyone?
