The drone industry is quietly diversifying beyond its imaging roots, with emerging trends for drone applications for 2026 including delivery, spraying and tracking.

Those fields are showing real growth — even if they’re still playing catch-up to the traditional leaders. That’s according to the Global State of Drones 2025 report from drone market research company Drone Industry Insights, which used data collected in mid-2025 based on a survey of 768 people within the drone industry spanning 87 countries.

Their survey found that delivery, spraying and dispensing, and localization and tracking have all crossed into meaningful adoption territory, each claiming between 5% and 7% of drone operations. These numbers might seem small compared to mapping’s dominant 35% share, but they represent something more significant: proof that drones can succeed beyond their original use cases.

The declining popularity of drone photography

To understand where the industry is heading, it helps to see where it’s been. Photography and filming —once the gateway application that got many operators into the business — is in steady decline. The Drone Industry Insights survey shows photography and filming now accounts for just 18% of drone operations, down from 22% in 2024 and 28% in 2023.

Now to be clear, this isn’t because fewer people want aerial imagery. Some drone photographers, like Eric Thurber, have landed unintentional second careers in the drone industry as videographers and photographers. I continue to see more promo videos of cruise ships and theme parks relying on drones. Yes, it is entirely possibly to grow a successful photography business, including in fields like wedding photography or real estate.

It’s just that these use cases are no longer the dominant force, reflecting the maturation of the industry.

“The creation of commercial imagery advances (geo-information, live footage) and is usually part of a larger mapping or inspection job,” according to the DII report.

The standalone aerial photography gig is becoming rare. Today’s construction site drone operator captures images as part of a mapping mission. The agricultural drone pilot takes photos while conducting crop health analysis. Photography became a feature, not a product.

It also means that other applications are growing, taking a piece of photograph’s pie. Those include:

Drone delivery

Drone delivery has been “the future” for so long that it became a punchline. Jeff Bezos unveiled Amazon’s drone delivery vision nearly a decade ago, and for years, the gap between prototype videos and actual service remained vast.

But 2025 is shaping up differently. The DII survey shows delivery operations now account for 7% of drone use. That’s a notable jump that reflects real deployments, not just test programs.

Funding to the drone delivery sector has remained surprisingly strong despite broader venture capital downturns. In the first seven months of 2023, seed and venture funding to companies in the drone and drone management sectors hit $1.51 billion, according to Crunchbase. That’s almost as much as the entire 2022 fundraising haul.

The biggest recipient? Zipline, the San Francisco-based delivery drone manufacturer that’s been quietly proving the model works, particularly in healthcare and remote delivery scenarios. Incoming Part 108 rules should make drone delivery even more widespread (the proposed rule on flying drones beyond visual line of sight dropped in June 2025).

Spraying

Agricultural drone spraying represents perhaps the most dramatic success story among alternative applications. Like delivery, spraying also captured 7% of the market, but unlike delivery, it’s solving a problem that farmers face every single season.

The appeal is straightforward: traditional ground-based spraying equipment is expensive, causes soil compaction and can’t easily access difficult terrain. Helicopter spraying works but costs significantly more. Drones hit a sweet spot. It’s more capable than ground equipment, yet far cheaper than helicopters.

Leading agricultural drones like the DJI Agras T50 feature 40-liter spray tanks, dual atomized centrifugal nozzles for fine uniform droplets and active phased array radar with binocular vision enabling 3D terrain-mapping and obstacle avoidance.

Tracking and localization

Perhaps the least celebrated but most practical alternative application is localization and tracking, which now accounts for 5% of operations. This category covers a range of uses from tracking livestock to monitoring equipment on construction sites to search and rescue operations.

Thermal and multispectral imaging makes drones ideal for assessing crop health, conducting search-and-rescue missions in low-visibility conditions and even managing livestock. A rancher can check on cattle across vast properties in minutes instead of hours. A construction manager can verify that equipment is where it should be without walking the entire site. Search and rescue teams can cover terrain that would take dozens of people on foot.

Why diversification matters

Don’t mourn the dropping significant in drone photography. Celebrate it.

The diversification of drone applications is essential for the industry’s long-term health. An industry that relies too heavily on one or two applications is vulnerable to technological disruption, regulatory changes or market saturation.

The agriculture, construction and energy sectors — the three dominant adopters according to the survey— are all finding uses for drones beyond simple imaging. Construction sites use drones for surveying, delivery of small tools and parts and thermal inspection. Farms use them for mapping, spraying and livestock monitoring. Energy companies employ them for inspection, delivery to remote sites and infrastructure mapping.

For pilots and companies trying to build businesses in this space, the message is clear: specialization in emerging applications can offer opportunities that crowded markets like aerial photography no longer provide.

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On a November morning in a cow-dotted field 90 minutes outside Austin, Texas, I watched three drones — two Skyways V2s and a V3 — lift off in near-unison.

The “hangar” was a converted trailer, with a shabby RV doubling as a command center, augmented with a pop-up tent to provide some shade. A chunk of astroturf, dotted with precision landing targets, indicates where the drones take off and land. A single port-a-potty completed the setup.

Yet from this humble patch of pasture, American drone company Skyways is trying to reinvent how the world moves cargo.

“We’re building the world’s largest autonomous aircraft fleet for cargo delivery,” said Isaac Roberts, Skyways’ chief commercial officer. “The catch is, if you can make something carry cargo, you can also eventually carry people. That’s where the real utility — and opportunity — begins.”

Skyways’ ambitions stretch far beyond this Texas field. The Austin-based startup designs and manufactures long-range, hybrid drones that can ferry supplies across oceans and into war zones, all without a pilot onboard. Its aircraft, already used by the U.S. military and commercial operators overseas, blend vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) rotors with a heavy-fuel engine for extended range — nearly 500 miles for the current V2 model, and over 1,000 miles for the next-generation V3.

Despite its rustic test site, Skyways already has a number of paying clients worldwide, and it has been generating revenue since early in its existence. Those companies include ANA Holdings in Japan, which not only flies Skyways drones between Okinawan islands but has also invested $1 million through its corporate venture fund. In Europe, Skyports’ success has led to talks with logistics giants like DSV and potential contracts with the Royal Australian Navy.

Acknin’s strategy, he said, is to “prove the model where conditions are toughest.” Offshore wind farms, disaster zones, and military exercises are all proving grounds for an aircraft designed to bridge what he calls the “middle mile” — the gap between warehouses and the final delivery point.

How Skyways fits into the current drone landscape

“We’ve certainly seen one trough of disillusionment,” Roberts said, referring to the rise and fall of countless drone startups. “But I think we’re in the second wave now — and it’s not business-to-consumer anymore. It’s business-to-business, and business-to-government.”

Founder and CEO, Charles Acknin, has spent the past eight years building Skyways into a hybrid company: part defense contractor and part commercial logistics innovator. The company holds one of the largest U.S. Air Force STRATFI contracts ever awarded, worth $37 million. These days, it’s a go-to partner for beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS) flight testing with the Department of Defense.

Much of the renewed interest in the drone industry comes from the way people have been using drones in Ukraine.

“Ukraine changed the landscape for the drone space,” Roberts said. “The Department of Defense needs contested logistics capabilities, especially in a near-peer conflict with China. But that same aircraft that serves a naval base today could deliver medical supplies tomorrow.”

But it’s also delivering in the private sector. In October, Skyways aircraft performed a first-of-its-kind cargo drop to a wind turbine in the Baltic Sea. Working with RWE and Skyports Drone Services, the company’s V2 flew 50-mile round trips in winds approaching 30 knots. The use case? It cut what would have been a two-hour crew transfer vessel trip down to just 26 minutes.

“Standing up BVLOS operations offshore is no small feat,” Acknin said. “We’re proud to see our aircraft chosen for some of the toughest missions out there.”

What Skyways is doing differently from other drone makers

Though this was Skyways’ first demo day, the company is far past the prototype stage. At Demo Day, I saw a team of pilots working out of laptops on folding tables. It was one pilot per drone (though not necessarily because of the tech but to remain in compliance with Federal Aviation Administration rules).They worked behind screens set up under the tent and out of the back of the RV. There, a live feed tracked each flight path, colored lines snaking across a map of central Texas.

After the aircraft returned from its autonomous loop and landed, a technician crouched to detach its cargo bay panel, dissemble the drone and load it in his car, showing off how portable the drone is despite its massive size.

At the demo, we saw two versions of the V2 aircraft and one version of the V3 aircraft. V3 is a slightly larger, sleeker aircraft with an extra pusher propeller that they say is “3x the capabilities of V2.” It’s technically the seventh generation Skyways aircraft, and the culmination of eight years of work.

Skyways began not with a fuselage but with code. That’s likely due in part to the leadership’s background. CEO Acknin’s career largely began as a software engineer at Google. The company’s proprietary SkyNav software can coordinate multiple aircraft at once.

But its hardware is most noticeable. Skyways plans to ramp up V3 production next year, with full-rate manufacturing by the end of 2027. The company now counts more than 30 employees and is hiring aggressively — Roberts called out during the demonstration for engineers and pilots to “come join us.”

“Our operational authority creates an insurmountable competitive moat — not just for us, but for our customers,” Roberts said. “We’re not asking them to imagine what’s possible. We’re showing them what’s flying right now.”

Join me for a 60-second version of demo day in this video below. Want more? Subscribe to me on YouTube!

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