Think Amazon’s Drone Delivery Idea Is a Gimmick? Think Again - The New York Times

From a drone delivery reality check

"“It’s a vastly easier problem — flying than driving,” said Keller Rinaudo, the co-founder of Zipline, a drone-delivery start-up that will begin deploying a system to deliver medical goods in Rwanda this fall. “If we had regulatory permission, we’d be delivering to your house right now,” he added, referring to the San Francisco Bay Area.

If Amazon’s drone program succeeds (and Amazon says it is well on track), it could fundamentally alter the company’s cost structure. A decade from now, drones would reduce the unit cost of each Amazon delivery by about half, analysts at Deutsche Bank projected in a recent research report. If that happens, the economic threat to competitors would be punishing — “retail stores would cease to exist,” Deutsche’s analysts suggested, and we would live in a world more like that of “The Jetsons” than our own."

Think Amazon’s Drone Delivery Idea Is a Gimmick? Think Again - The New York Times