Tencent is looking to enter the highly-competitive drone segment by producing its own under the name Ying.
The company has collaborated with Zerotech for this purpose. The drone, equipped with an integrated camera, was first announced at the Consumer Electronics Show.
The consumer quadcopter is a compact-sized drone, which can be easily carried in a bag. The drone, weighing less than a pound, comes with a camera which is capable of capturing 4K videos. It can also stream videos with 720p HD quality. It is the first drone live stream capability, It can live stream directly to chat conversation, particularly Tencent’s WeChat, which currently has over 800 million active users.
Tencent has developed the drone in collaboration with Qualcomm and Zerotech. Ying can be folded for easy transportation. The company is likely to use its WeChat cachet for pushing sales of the drone. It is also operating system agnostic, as the drone can be controlled using iOS or Android app as it mimics the movement of the phone.
Drone segment is fast heating up with major players such as GoPro and DJI unveiling their latest drones recently. GoPro announced the launch of its Karma drone, which is priced at $719.99. Karma will be available in the market from Oct. 23. Similarly, DJI also unveiled Mavic Pro recently. This drone outprices Karma with its $999 price tag.
Ying is priced modestly at $300. The drone is already up for pre-orders and will start shipping by the end of this month. Tencent has not clarified whether the drone will be available in the United States or not.
Source: ChinaTopix
