- DJI appeals its US ban
- The company says it could lose $1.5 billion this year.
- 25 product launches are planned in 2026
Late last year, new DJI products were effectively banned in the United States, meaning devices like the DJI Osmo Pocket 4 cannot be found in the US. In a newly released court filing, we now have an idea of what the cost will be for DJI and its US-based fans.
DJI is busy appealing the ban in US courts (via DroneDJ), and in official documents the Chinese tech giant claims that being banned from the United States will cost it about $1.5 billion over the course of this year: around $700 million in regulatory payments for devices that were never released and another $860 million for new products in 2026.
Those new products number 25 in total, according to the filing (see page 7), and will include both drones and other types of devices (such as vlogging cameras). This represents “serious and immediate harm” to DJI, the document says.
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And it’s not just DJI that’s missing out: DJI maintains that businesses, energy companies and emergency services that rely on DJI kit will be negatively affected because they’ll be stuck with older hardware. This is a violation of constitutional and federal law, DJI argues in its appeal.
National security interests
The ban came as the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) placed DJI on the ‘Covered List’, a list of entities believed to be a threat to national security (Huawei is also on the list, for example).
Neither the FCC nor the US government has explained exactly what threat DJI poses to citizen safety, but once the deadline for a DJI safety audit passed, that was it. There are believed to be concerns that a Chinese company has such deep access to US networks and such a wide range of photo and video capture devices.
Whatever the political or security concerns, given that DJI regularly tops our list of the best drones on the market, it’s a shame that US customers can no longer get their hands on these devices. The US appeals court must now decide whether the challenge can go forward, which would give DJI more leeway to defend its case.
On DJI’s part, the evidence is that substantial losses are already occurring, so the decision should be challenged as soon as possible. In the meantime, we expect another drone from DJI any day now.
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