DJI's US Retail Presence Has Become Very Confusing

DJI announced the Mic 3 this morning, and, like with DJI’s last few launches, the retail situation in the United States is a confusing mess.

DJI’s situation with the United States government has been turbulent, to say the least. Beyond repeatedly delayed security audits, the company has also faced longstanding threats of a drone ban, which ultimately didn’t materialize.

Yet.

Additionally, the Chinese company has been skipping the United States market with recent product launches… at least officially. Unofficially, the situation has been significantly different.

Like DJI said when it launched the Mavic 4 Pro in May, the company said this morning that the Mic 3 “will not be available for sale immediately in the U.S. market via DJI’s official channels.”

This claim is true — the Mic 3 is not available for purchase on the company’s U.S. website. However, it is at least listed, which is bizarrely still not the case for the Mavic 4 Pro. Nonetheless, the DJI Mic 3 is available for purchase in the United States through other channels, including Adorama, Amazon, and B&H Photo.

So, DJI isn’t selling its new products through its own web store, which has long been a popular and reliable place to purchase the company’s drones, cameras, gimbals, and microphones. However, it is still somehow getting into the U.S.

“We cannot comment on behalf of retailers,” DJI told PetaPixel today. This is the same thing DJI told PetaPixel about the Mavic 4 Pro popping up in stores at launch, including, oddly, DJI’s own brick-and-mortar retail store in New York City.

When explaining why the Mavic 4 Pro was “officially” skipping the United States at launch, DJI claimed that it was in response to changing local conditions and an evolving industry environment, which was a fairly tame way to say that tariffs on Chinese imports are bad for business. However, these tariffs have obviously not altogether eliminated DJI’s latest products from the U.S. market, even if prices have increased.

But DJI’s import problems extend beyond just tariffs. The company has reportedly found itself blocked from some imports entirely, which is strange since there is no law that would prevent the company from importing anything.

That’s whys there is speculation that DJI is trying to import products through different means. Last month, PetaPixel reported that DJI appeared to be selling its Mini 4 Pro drone under a different brand on Amazon in the United States: SkyRover. Code from the SkyRover X1 drone points toward DJI’s network, and DJI told PetaPixel it could neither confirm nor deny the allegations that SkyRover was really just a DJI company.

Looping back to the Mic 3 situation, it is worth considering the Amazon situation specifically. While it still remains unclear how retailers like Adorama and B&H have been receiving DJI’s latest products, and nobody at DJI is willing to answer PetaPixel‘s questions about it, the DJI Amazon storefront is quite interesting.

There is a “DJI Store” on Amazon, and it appears very official. It features DJI’s official marketing materials and branding. However, products bought through the DJI Amazon store actually come from AeroTech Hubs. DJI has not yet responded to PetaPixel‘s inquiry about any potential connection between DJI and AeroTech Hubs. AeroTech Hubs also doesn’t seem to exist anywhere outside of this one storefront that sells almost entirely DJI products, except for one hairdryer and hairdryer accessory.


All this is to say that while DJI’s situation in the United States has been contentious for some time, it has become downright bizarre over the past few months. It’s confusing when DJI launches a new product, emphasizes that it will not be officially launched in the United States, and then customers can still purchase it from reputable American retailers. In any event, the brand-new DJI Mic 3 is available in the United States, just not through DJI itself, and DJI says it has no information on when — or if — that will change.

Image credits: Header image via DJI