Up In the Air: Amazon Plans for Distribution Centers In the Sky

It seems as if the Helicarrier from the popular Marvel’s Avengers comic books and movies will become something of a reality. Amazon, the giant e-commerce store that has been used by hundreds of millions of users around the planet, has recently won a patent for a flying warehouse.

According to a report from NBC News, Amazon filed a patent for an “airborne fulfillment center” which will act as a home base for the company’s drones in order to refuel and refill on goods. These large centers will constantly remain in the air, at approximately 45,000 feet. Amazon believes the process will prove very simple, with customers ordering an item, and having a nearby drone drop down from a delivery center and deliver said item.

The patent also describes that the process will require little power on the drone’s part, stating “when the UAV departs the AFC, it may descend from the high altitude of the AFC using little or no power other than to guide the UAV towards its delivery destination and/or to stabilize the UAV as it descends.”

The patent also describes other potential, practical uses for the AFC. Primarily, Amazon plans for the distribution centers to be used at sporting events, where viewers might want food or merchandise. They can place orders for an item, and have a nearby drone deliver it quickly. The AFCs could also be used as enormous billboards for merchandise. The patent also describes how the drones and fulfillment centers would use mesh networks to communicate with one another.

This is not Amazon’s first foray into the drone delivery market. Just this month, the company’s first ever drone delivery was successfully completed in the U.K., proving that the much talked about process is possible.

Although Amazon has won the patent and has intricate details describing the process and intentions of the AFCs, this does not necessarily mean that they will even see the light of day. It does, however, mean that the possibility of these AFCs filling up the airways is one step closer to becoming real. And it begs the question: is this a good idea? Should we have these large, helicarrier-esque distribution centers hovering above our heads at all times? What would happen if one of those giant centers were to lose power and drop to the ground, potentially killing millions of people? How would these centers be powered, and, depending on the type of fuel, what effects would they have on the environment? And, again, even though Amazon may never actually create the distribution centers, these are very real questions that need to be asked if they plan on moving forward.

Microsoft: The Tech Market’s Comeback Story

shutterstock_140495338-msftMicrosoft, up until the past few years, was always considered the pinnacle of technological innovation in the realm of consumer products. The name itself would strike fear in the hearts of technology executives of all backgrounds; a wolf amongst sheep. However, Microsoft’s name has become a punchline amongst today’s technorati, a joke about the diminishing marginal returns on putting all your eggs in one basket as far as innovation goes, a formerly dominant company becoming a plodding kludge. Recent history of Microsoft has been rife with missed release deadlines, delayed products, and cancelled features, to the point of disheartening consumer and enterprise users the world over.

The rest of the tech market has moved vastly quicker than Microsoft has. Between 2006-2008 Apple introduced the iPhone, Amazon introduced AWS, Google brought about Andriod, and Facebook debuted its News Feed. Those innovations alone encompass a great deal of innovation in their wake, making those four companies the “quadrumvirate of tech” making some comment that Microsoft simply no longer belongs on the list of top tech companies.

However, Microsoft has always had the critical ingredients for success. Consumers want always-portable, always-available, always-usable data across all our devices and applications, allowing us to constantly be in touch, productive, or entertained depending on our mood. From Office to XBox, Microsoft has all of the individual tools and products it needs to fulfill all of our wildest tech fantasies. Yet, by the same token, Microsoft has seemed plagued with constant inefficiency and political strife which inhibited the company from permanently establishing itself as the key brand in the tech market; a position that has been usurped completely by a dominant split between Google and Apple.

However, as Bob Dylan once said, the times they are a changin’. Sampling from some recent news out of Microsoft’s camp in the past few weeks, it seems Microsoft is making a push to become relevant again. Recently Microsoft announced that it launched Office across all devices, including on iPad and Android to some decent acclaim. Additionally, Microsoft is building a very disruptive startup lab headed by a well known executive from DARPA to take on the likes of GoogleX. Bing is now responsible for nearly 19% of all search queries in the United States, slowly pushing against Google’s dominant search engine market share. It’s even making Skype group calls free as of just days ago.

Most importantly however, Microsoft seems ready to embrace the cloud. Microsoft’s new CEO, Satya Nadella, published a letter a month ago outlining a renewed focus on positioning Microsoft at the center of this new cloud based world by creating a “cloud for everyone, on every device.” Almost over night it seemed that Microsoft was finally ready to make the next big push by harnessing its full energy, it’s $20 billion in revenue and $5.66 billion in Q1 net earnings that it had announced only days ago. A Microsoft with a strategy, a vision, is a deadly force in the race for tech supremacy, a race that’s comparable to the US/USSR cold war arms race at this point. All four of the quadrumvirate are highly vulnerable at the moment due to the market convergence created by similar products that depend on devices and the cloud. Continuous engagement is at the heart of these companies’ strategies, and consumers are salivating over a new entrant into the market. 

Are You Ready to Take Flight with Prime Air?

One of the segments on ‘60 Minutes’ last Sunday night was an interview with Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.  The interview was pretty standard fare, until Bezos made an announcement to Charlie Rose that he had a new initiative to reveal.  The new initiative is to

amazon-prime-airdeliver certain packages to Amazon customers with drones — possibly reducing product shipping time to as little as 30 minutes.

For example, go ahead and click the BUY button for the new Kindle, then make a cup of tea for yourself and when you are done drinking your tea, go out your front door and pick up your new Kindle that was delivered to you by a drone sometime over the last thirty minutes. This scenario is an extremely disruptive concept to standard-fare delivery.

What type of product?  The product(s) would have to be 5 lbs or less which currently represents 80%+ of Amazon’s deliveries.  The customer’s delivery address would need to be within a 10 mile radius of an Amazon distribution center.

A drone?  The delivery system Bezos described in his interview was an octocopter which uses a lithium polymer battery.  One of the big benefits, in addition to expediency, is the green solution provided by the drones, therefore reducing the need for fossil-fuel burning delivery trucks.

The props on the octocopter are fixed-pitch and the motors are attached rigidly to the structure so control is provided by software which throttles the engines to move the aircraft. The feedback loop has to be very sophisticated to insure that the flight plan is achieved.

Projected implementation?  Not before 2015 or a date after the FAA delivers their requirements for unmanned aerial vehicles.

Considerations?  Safety is the primary driver.  How do you build enough redundancy to insure the drone gets to the proper coordinates and returns to the distribution center.  How about exogenous variables such as weather, software glitches, hardware malfunctions, customer delivery receptacles and crowded airspace?  I am sure that most of these issues are addressable.

Jeff Bezos and Amazon don’t get into a business without having a thoughtful plan to move Amazon into a position of market leader.  Bezos realizes that the next great company is always “just around the corner” and without consumer trust and product innovation, Amazon can be replaced.  Clearly, the concept of Prime Air meets the innovation requirement but there will be much competition in this space as the primary delivery companies (ie, UPS, FedEx) are not going stand by idly and let Amazon gut their business.