DJI stops selling! Is the trend of educational robots receding?

An announcement of suspension of sales stirred up the education market that had been silent for a long time.

In December 2023, DJI’s “STEAM Education” official website suddenly announced that it will officially stop selling Tello edu, RoboMaster EP, AI artificial intelligence kit, DJI education platform and AI scenario-based education solutions on December 31.

This means that starting from 2024, DJI will suspend its youth education business.

Combined with LEGO's previous "drastic cuts" in its education business, one can't help but wonder: With the industry's top players "abandoning" one after another, how are others going to play? How long will the boom in educational robots last?

01 Behind DJI’s exit

A grand robot dream

For DJI founder Wang Tao, entering the education business is not simply a commercial consideration, but is more driven by personal emotions.

Long before DJI was founded, Wang Tao had participated in the RoboCon robot competition. In 2006, while still studying for a master's degree at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Wang Tao started his entrepreneurial journey in a warehouse of less than 20 square meters in Shenzhen with the award-winning flight control system research of Robocon. In 2013, DJI launched its first consumer drone, the Phantom 1, opening up the mass market for drones and soaring all the way to firmly sitting on the top share of the drone market.

In 2014, when negotiating investment matters with Sequoia Capital, Wang Tao proposed an idea - to establish the world's most influential robot competition. Thus, the RoboMaster Super Competition came into being and achieved great success.

When the domestic STEAM education craze started, DJI also started from competitions and deployed other educational products and solutions in order to create a smart education ecosystem covering different stages and groups.

Behind this, it reflects the "idealism" that is in the blood of DJI. Wang Tao once said that the original intention of RoboMaster was to create national idols like Yao Ming and Liu Xiang, and even more so to produce respected inventors and entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs.

However, feelings are feelings, and the operation of an enterprise must still follow business rules.

Adjust strategy and focus more on core business

The suspension of sales this time is mainly due to DJI’s strategic adjustments based on the needs of business optimization.

From the perspective of revenue structure, DJI's education business has always been in a marginal position compared to its main drone business, accounting for less than 2%, and cannot contribute significant performance growth to the company.

At present, DJI drones have accounted for more than 70% of the global market share. It can be said that in the same field, there is no one else who can compete with DJI. The intelligent driving field that has been deployed in recent years may also become a new growth point besides the drone business, riding on the new energy spring breeze.

In this comparison, the education business, which has a promising future but can only "generate electricity for love" at this stage, appears much bleaker.

In addition, from the perspective of product logic, the youth education sector is not well matched with DJI’s products. DJI’s core advantage lies in the innovative collaboration of software and hardware, but the education sector places more emphasis on a comprehensive and complete curriculum system and community ecosystem.

However, the demands for K12 educational robots vary significantly among age groups, the products are diverse and complex, and require a large amount of localized operations, which does not fit in with DJI’s “product first” gene.

Therefore, DJI's decision to cut off its youth business is the result of overall considerations and business focus based on the company's development. Although it is a bit regrettable, it is reasonable to invest more resources in high-growth areas.

Temporarily withdraw from K12, the trend of educational robots cannot reach the C-end

According to the announcement, DJI has only stopped selling K12 products for teenagers, and the RoboMaster competition will continue.

It is not difficult to see that in addition to the company's strategic considerations, the development difficulties of educational robots themselves are also a factor in DJI's decision to shrink its business.

Although educational robots have been gaining popularity in the past few years, how to open up the C-end market has always been a difficult problem for the industry. If STEAM education wants to move from schools to people's homes, the road is long and arduous.

However, current educational robots face the dilemma of "three highs".

First, the product price is high. Compared with ordinary electronic products, the price of educational robots is not cheap, and if you want to purchase a complete ecological kit and services, the price will be even higher. In addition, in the current extracurricular education environment, programming robots is not a required skill, and parents are not willing to spend. Educational robots are still a "luxury product" for high-spending people.

Second, the threshold for use is high. Educational robots are not simple products that can be used immediately. They require supporting algorithms, programming knowledge, and an understanding of hardware principles. For most families, the purpose of purchase is to cultivate children's interest in programming. The natural attributes of educational robots have formed a certain threshold between ordinary students and parents. If you sign up for expensive training courses and summer camps in order to better use and master the use of robots, it is undoubtedly "making dumplings for vinegar".

Third, the investment is high. The development of educational robots requires continuous research and development and iteration, which requires companies to invest a lot of money and the payback period is also very long.

When the product is difficult and customers are not willing to buy it, and when the company loses money by providing proper learning services to everyone, To C products are not easy to sell and the company is caught in a dilemma.

02 Where is educational robots heading?

The development of educational robots has benefited from the country's policy of encouraging STEM education. STEM is the abbreviation of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, which emphasizes the intersection and integration of these disciplines, with the aim of cultivating students' innovative thinking and problem-solving abilities.

In 2017, the Ministry of Education, together with nine other departments including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, issued the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plan", which proposed supporting the popularization of basic artificial intelligence knowledge and enlightenment education for primary and secondary school students.

This has given the green light to the development of educational robots. Against this background, a number of domestic and foreign companies have successively launched robot products for STEM education.

Educational robots are considered to be an effective tool to make traditional education "dynamic" by stimulating children's interest and creativity through assembly, programming and other means. With the strong promotion of various governments, robot courses and robot teaching products have also developed.

However, after the initial prosperity, pain points in the field of educational robots, such as an imperfect industrial ecosystem, a complex market environment, inconsistent standards, and single scenarios, have become increasingly prominent.

From DJI’s changes, we can also see that more and more players in the industry are rationally thinking about the future direction of the educational robot track.

But despite the difficulties, educational robots still have great potential in the long run.

At present, it has become a consensus that education should adapt to the talent needs of future industrial changes, and educational robots just meet the needs of cultivating students' computational thinking and innovative consciousness. This field is still worthy of active exploration.

Related companies are also actively looking for new ways to enter this market. For example, lowering the product threshold and providing entry-level products to attract more beginners; building a complete teaching content and curriculum system, not just mechanical operation; and creating an entire robot learning ecosystem through competitions, communities, etc.

Today’s pains are nothing more than the inevitable adjustment period for industrial transformation. During this process, all parties need to work together and continue to explore to ensure that this new technology truly benefits the people.