It was a publicity stunt by Amazon PR.
Hook line and free delivery sinker.
BTW Earl; the locals are shooting down drones at the moment in one of the secluded areas of Colorado or Montana. Paranoia, moonshine and guns is never a great mix.
Possibly, but I think this is serious. Amazon aren't the only ones, they are actually behind the leaders it seems
http://qz.com/152788/australia-and-china-are-way-ahead-of-amazon-in-the-commercial-drone-race/
From an operational view if these drones could each deliver 20 packets a day with the rock bottom delivery price being around £2 via Royal Mail, this means that each drone could save at least £40 per day delivery costs. If the drone costs say £1,000 each (bulk purchase price) they would take 25 work days to get their purchase cost back.
If 1,000 of these drones were delivering parcels across the country, they would be essentially delivering 20,000 packets a day which is a saving of £40,000 per day on delivery costs.
The costs could be further improved if each drone could deliver mulitple packets at a time. If each could deliver 3 packets then each drone would be saving £120 per day delivery costs (£600 per week).
Let's also remember that the goal here is to reduce delivery time. At the current moment there isn't any way of delivering a parcel within a few hours let alone 30 minutes.
The industry is currently at pains to try and figure out how to speed up the delivery process, next day delivery is still too long, customers want everything now, not tomorrow, so it seems a feasible idea to me and one that a true 'entrepreneur' would look at.
It could be a far fetched idea, but then again so could have the Amazon website when it started. He who dares wins
Chris.
