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Comment by Havoc | Hacker News Reader

Seems a bit pointless banning the market leader?

Yes this is a strange one.

There is no viable competitor to DJI for consumers when it comes to the software side especially -- DJI software is miles ahead of the other drone producers (on-drone and their mobile apps).

When I try to download DJI fly app from the Play Store it always crashes.

which drone do you have? there is a DJI fly app version that you have to sideload. The current ones on playstore are just fine

Mini 2

I always had sideloaded fly app for mini 2. You can get it directly on the dji website

Like they said, the market leader.

I thought they stopped distributing it via the Play store and required side-loading now.

Correct. This is why all the drones come with screens on the sticks now.

Worked with Huawei. Look at the smartphone market pre and post Huawei ban, immediate crater.

I'm sorry, but what exactly happen after Huawei ban?

They are probably referring to the period where Huawei struggled to even ship a device because of sanctions applied to them that made it impossible to source components.

Once these were overcome they have bounced back and are looking stronger than ever, their revenue has now risen above the pre-sanctions peak.

https://www.economist.com/briefing/2024/06/13/americas-assas...

Pre Huawei ban, they had 30% smartphone market. Each year that looked like it was trending upwards without any sign of stopping.

The year after? Poof, very small percentage of the global market.

Huawei didn't have the best phones by far. DJI is miles ahead of anything else one can buy.

I agree that Huawei didn't have the best phones, but it was not that far off, and for the price it was arguably a better phone.

Need a phone with a great camera? Then Huawei is much better than anything Samsung, Apple, and Google makes. Huawei market share was taking off at crazy speed before the bans on both the software and hardware side.

The Huawei ban's impact on smartphones was mostly a side effect. The real target was wireless infrastructure. Any time spent analyzing the phone stuff is a waste, that was all mostly collateral damage as we tried to prevent Huawei from dominating our domestic 5G (and related) networks.

> Seems a bit pointless banning the market leader?

I guess that depends on what the goal is? If a foreign company is the market leader, banning it allows US companies to take over the domestic market without having to actually figure out how to be competitive with the market leader.

Which US companies are going to have a $500 competent consumer drone with a great camera, solid reliability, and top of the line ease of use to sell me the day this ban goes into effect, or even 5 years down the road? The answer is none.

There are no US companies capable of serving this market. None can produce the product DJI did and consumers will abandon the market before they'll transition to a product that costs twice as much for half the value.

This is not like smartphones or laptops or televisions or any of that, it's not needed, it's a total luxury and hobby for 95% of buyers. They will walk before adopting a shitty US-based alternative and the market will shrivel and die.

So, this is a fine policy if hurting US consumers by destroying an entire field of hobby to thumb our noses at China is the goal. It's a broken policy of stimulating a US alternative is the goal. To accomplish the latter, subsidies and reasonable tariffs are the right approach, not bans.

> without having to actually figure out how to be competitive with the market leader.

This assumes end users will accept an inferior product. Without some additional pressure - subsidies or hell even nationalism - a ban alone won’t magically create on par US companies.

China has been doing this for decades so we don’t need to guess here. They seem to always bring much broader societal, financial and other support not just restrict access

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