News — Drones

There has always been this underlying fear that robots or technology will one day take over the world. The latest conversation around this topic is regarding drones and how they are potentially replacing or automating jobs worldwide. This article is not aimed at intimidating or overstating the facts, but rather to shed some light into the conversation revolving drones and the impact it would have on people in a larger business sense.

For many years now drones have been used in the military or in the toy market, however as they grow in popularity and innovation they are quickly moving from novelty items to valuable business tools and this anxiety around technology taking over is swiftly nearing it’s turning point - worldwide.

It is true that drones affect multiple industries from agriculture, communications, filmmaking, insurance, media and entertainment, mining, security and surveillance, transportation and many others – each with their own needs and variety of drone functionalities to put to use. Drones are becoming increasingly significant in our daily lives. However, it is not the growing popularity and innovative technology in question, but rather the impact on human labour and jobs.

Some might argue that we do not know the impact of this technological leap, looking at smartphones and their current global impact we would never have guessed this success in the infancy of the development – are drones not heading in the same global direction? Drones are impacting business operations and companies locally and abroad – effectively solving business challenges with more success and less labour.

According to a case study performed by PwC in May 2016, the commercial use of drones is valued at $127 Billion in replacing human labour with drone driven solutions.

Don’t freak out! Drones will replace some jobs, but on a larger scale realistically would cause job displacement for the workforce. One aspect to consider is that drones need operators. Uses for drones will also continue to grow and expand along with the drones themselves, ever improving and evolving. Therefor new (or different types of) jobs will be created.

“One drone delivering parcels probably provides as much work for the operator as a courier van does for a driver.” – Adrian Schofield (ICT analyst).

IMPLICATIONS FOR US LOCALLY:

In 2015 SA was one of the first countries in the world to regulate commercial drone use. Drones carry many benefits for Africa itself, one being agriculture (such as pesticide distribution or data gathering). In the Kruger National Park drones are used for poaching surveillance. Other functions such as transportation have also been used locally – at great success.

You see the answer regarding “is it taking my job” is about displacement rather than replacement all together. In the end drones will create more jobs than what they replace – enabling us to do more than what we can imagine or are currently capable of.

Action Gear SA is proud to announce our exclusive partnership with ProWings South Africa, the first CAA approved Drone school in South Africa.

Please contact sales@actiongear.co.za or 011 781 1323 for more information. 

We're 6 years old! Well I certainly do feel like a 6 year old on Christmas with all these awesome outdoor products constantly surrounding us!

April 2010 saw the opening of Action Gear (then Action Cameras) and we've been on a fun journey ever since! When we started up we were the first in SA to sell GoPros, Drift and other action cam brands which have grown in popularity over the years as well as other brands which have come and gone over the years. It's been said that luck is when preparation meets opportunity so I guess we were very lucky be at the forefront of the growth of the action cam industry and I like to think that we played a massive role in introducing South Africa to this range of products.

Obviously we no longer just sell the cameras as we evolved our name to Action Gear in 2013 and widened our product range to include Drones, GPS's, Sports Watches, Power Solutions, Binoculars, Night Vision Scopes and any other interesting outdoor tech that we could get our hands on. But here's something you might not have known, it was actually you, our friends and customers who convinced us to make this change and widen our range. We had so many of our loyal GoPro customers asking for us to get them other gear that they wanted because, as they said, we offer the best service of any retailer in SA (yes, we actually have that comment and others framed on our Raving Fan Wall).

My business partner and co-founder of the Action Gear brand Dave Davies has been a driving force behind the growth which we've had over the years. Between him and I we've come up with great ideas which worked brilliantly (like becoming leaders in the drone industry) and other ideas which were spectacular failures (like the TV show which we ran with for a few months!) but all in all we seem to do more right than wrong as, together with our team we've grown Action Gear into one of South Africa's leading eCommerce companies. We can actually say that now with confidence as we won a 1st prize for Best Customer Service in last year's eCommerce Awards!

Over the years we've proudly won a number of awards (which you can read about here) but we really believe that the best is yet to come as we continue to improve our product offering and the delivery services. We know that there's statistics about how many companies make it to 6 years but without knowing the exact stats we know that we've had good times and bad but we've stuck it out and we're here to stay. We want to become a household name and a favourite online shop and destination for outdoorsy, sporty and adventurous people. We look forward to sharing this journey with you!

By the way, did you know that we've just launched an updated version of the Action Gear website? Check it out and let us know what you think in the comments section below.

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