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Amazon, Inc the world’s largest online retailer, the largest e-commerce company, ranks as the worlds most visited online retail store is currently testing unmanned drones-yes, drones to deliver goods to its customers.
It’s the latest business strategy by Amazon Inc, which has been credited with revolutionizing the way people shop online the company invests heavily in distribution and delivery, which made up the largest portion of Amazon’s expenses in the third quarter of 2013, investors endorsed the spending on capacity and– the costs increased 35 percent to $2.03 billion –pushing up the company’s shares 57 percent.
Chief Executive Officer Mr Jeffery Bezos unveiled the plan on Sunday on the popular sunday night CBS program “60 Minutes ” with host Charlie Rose with a video of a tiny helicopter seizing a package from a warehouse and airlifting it to a house.
The drone then took off again. The drones, called Octocopters, could deliver packages weighing up to 2.3kg to customers within 30 minutes of them placing the order, he said the company has been working on Prime Air in its next-generation research and development lab, but cautioned that it would be a while before customers could choose it as a delivery option and added that it could take up to five years for the service to start.
The US Federal Aviation Administration is yet to approve the use of unmanned drones for civilian purposes with the current brouhaha over the Obama Administration and use of drones we could not expect less; civilian air space is expected to be opened up to all kinds of drones in the US by 2015 and in Europe by 2016.
CEO Mr Bezos chided “One day, Prime Air vehicles will be as normal as seeing mail trucks on the road today. Delivery drones could be the future of distribution in the very close future as Zookal, an Australian textbook rental company, announced earlier this year that it would start using drones to make deliveries from 2015 if approved by Australia’s Civil Aviation Safety Authority.
Australian law allows the use of unmanned aircraft for commercial use and in China, the SF Express delivery company is experimenting with drones in the southern city of Dongguan.
