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Originally Posted by darryl
It's far too early to tell whether drones will ever be a viable delivery system, either generally or for specific instances. But don't write them off either. It's nice to imagine my letterbox being replaced with a drone delivery dock perhaps broadcasting its identification. It may well come to nothing, but it wouldn't be the first idea to be ridiculed only to later become ubiquitous.
Amazon and others are trying to innovate and are on the lookout to buy companies that are innovating. There are ways to at least potentially avoid the innovator's dilemma which B&N did not try. Amazon does seem to be trying at least some of them.
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Drones are a lot like battery technology. Everyone imagines how wonderful it will be, but the issue is that they still haven't made that big breakthrough, thought they have been saying it's just around the corner for a decade now. Drones have to solve the problem of lift capacity, range and control. Even if they solve all that, you still have a range of issues with automated delivery. There was a pretty good article about the problems they need to solve before automated delivery becomes practical about a year ago when Amazon first started talking about drones. It's non trivial for sure. Keep in mind that what they need is automated drone delivery, not remote controlled drone delivery.