Think of the Mini-2 mutating by splitting into two offspring with different price points.
I think in today's environment one cannot look at previous prices for anything. When I order food I KNOW it's way higher than I paid last year. I just buy it because there isn't an alternative if you want the product. I, like many others just surrender to the new prices... or pass on the product. And one of the new terms that we see is "shrinkflation". While that usually applies to lower product volume at higher prices I think shrinkflation has been applying to DJI drones. M3 with a Mini 2's controller (comparing to the M2 controller). Just another form of shrinkflation.
For the average Joe hobbyist the Mini 2 is quite a formidable drone . While it doesn’t have the mass this size or the power of DJI’s larger drones, nor the ultimate image quality of the more expensive drones, for most recreational applications it is well good enough. If you’re a pro making money a Mini 3 or other will show up as a line item deduction on your tax return and net cost reduced. And let’s face the truth, until now plenty of folks were Shooting professionally with little or no complaints about image quality.
While you are right about the ancillary, additional inflational pressures. I will reiterate something I mentioned early and related it to food, but in a different sense: SHRINKFLATION. If you think features in terms of hardgoods, as you might volume in food, can you site one reason why a $3000 M3 having endured a HUGE price bump would have the same controller as their inexpensive Mini 2. One might expect, for $3000 you might have a controller, sans screen that had the same number and function of control buttonws that the M2 did, for over $1000 less... Again the M2 was ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS LESS. Other than the Ocusync change, they already had the extra button thing down, proven by the fact that they reappear on the M3's smart controller. Building a commensurate level standard controller, in the grand scheme of things, produced by Chinese labor would have cost them, what $100 per unit? $200? What would they have had to do, build a new case?
The relationship between costs and prices is tenuous at best. That's not how prices are set.
I get it. I was in business for over 30 years.. ROI is one thing. And while we believe in capitalism and sell for what you can get, or buy at what you can get, because of the relative, comparative prices, coupled with the obvious downgrade in (M3) controller, there are those of us who feel that the prices are a just bit predatory. JMO
The economics of all this are not perfectly clear, you can assume a few things perhaps, lack of chips, parts delays, production issues as China continues to try the impossible with "zero-covid", the extra cost for the delayed parts possibly. Additionally whatever the increased cost is for getting units to stores or customers via any shipping method..
If you lived as an adult between 1976 (actually 1970) and 1980 you've seen some things. Nowadays we are in a global economy and things move more or less in concert. If you remember those '76-'80 years, you know we are far from done "adjusting economically". I don't doubt that DJI bean counters and their algorithms know a few things that aren't apparent to us economic mortals.
You I remember those years, Gas lines, more... didn't pay that close attention to it then as I do now.. I just knew where the problem was.. There were those that pushed this global economy after that too, and now were paying a price for that, as way to many things we need are not made here.. which also causes problems. One could get into a long discussion of how we got here way outside of why DJI's prices appear to be going through a roof.
Yep. Long discussions we could. There are lessons from then that just aren't being heeded by people who were around and should know better.
I suggest that the notion of "predatory" is irrelevant in this context.
Gas lines were a self-imposed abomination. That part, we did to ourselves.
