Amazon Drones and possibilities

WSJ has reported the latest design on Amazon Drones and my first impression of this Drone was - 'the design sucks' - it looks so boxy and for anyone with an engineering background, the design seems so aerodynamically inefficient. But the design is not the intent of this blog post.

In this post I wanted to discuss the possibilities in a world where day-to-day stuff is being air dropped within 30 minutes of ordering from a website. Cost per mile by air is much cheaper than cost per mile by land and as things stand today (although this might change later), we can expect fewer traffic jams and unexpected delays in delivery using drones.

I can easily imagine a world where large drones, pre-loaded with items for big-sale days like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, loitering in the air, waiting for placement of orders. As soon as a customer buys stuff online, the coordinates get relayed to the nearest drone which goes and dumps the goods in a matter of minutes. In a way, what Uber has done using cab-drivers on land, Amazon can do the same using drones in air.

And assuming this initiative takes off, the natural question is how would companies change their digital marketing strategies? Can Amazon's drones identify all potential customers in a particular zone and send them offers from the air? Can they say something like  - 'A drone 10 minutes away from you is carrying XYZ at a phenomenal 50% discount. Buy this now and you will get the item in next 10 minutes at 50% of price". That would surely be exciting if the drones can send location based offers based on the cargo they are carrying. So, at the end of the day, instead of taking a large payload back to the warehouse, these drones can try to get rid of items at an attractive price by relaying offers to the nearest customers.

Possibilities are immense and I think drone delivery will redefine the way people shop online.