If you were hoping to get your hands on a new DJI drone in the future, that might be tricky because the US government has since placed DJI on its Entity List, the same list that Huawei is currently on. This spells trouble for the drone maker as they might have some issues finding parts for its products.For those unfamiliar, being placed on the US Entity List means that the company is no longer allowed to do business with US companies and vice versa. In the case of Huawei, we’ve also seen it to mean that these companies will also not be able to purchase products from non-US companies that might otherwise rely on US technologies.
That being said, DJI’s placement on the list isn’t due to national security reasons, but according to the Commerce Department, it is over alleged human rights issues where DJI, AGCU Scientech, China National Scientific Instruments and Materials, and Kuang-Chi Group “enabled wide-scale human rights abuses within China through abusive genetic collection and analysis or high-technology surveillance.”
Like we said, this could be bad news for DJI who like Huawei (or at least previously) are at the top of their game and is said to command 70-80% of the worldwide drone market. With these restrictions in place, we’re not sure how the company plans to launch future products or meet demand for existing ones.
Filed in . Read more about China, Dji, Drones and Legal. Source: reuters