Parrot announced the AR.Drone back at CES 2010, three years before DJI’s Phantom 1. It was a seemingly odd move by a company best known for making Bluetooth speakers and headsets, but over the years it’s continued to release fairly novel takes on the growing category.
Two years back, the French company announced its intentions to shift product away from consumer-focused devices. Since then, it’s been slowly scaling things back, this week confirming a Wirecutter report that it’s leaving the toys behind.
No doubt seeing an insurmountable challenge from China’s DJI, the company is shuttering all drone lines but Anafi. While the line closely resembles DJI’s Mavic products, Parrot has begun to position the foldable quadcopter at enterprise users. As we noted in April, the addition of a Flir thermal camera finds the company targeting construction workers and firefighters.
The move comes as the consumer and hobbyist market continues to grow, but those numbers have been utterly dominated by DJI’s offerings in recent years. Of course, DJI has also been tackling the B2B space, both with souped-up versions of the Mavic line and higher payload devices like the Matrice and Inspire.
Those products can perform a wide range of different tasks, from pesticide spraying to search and rescue.