Still, the nature of the partnership is vague, and it is important to note that the companies will continue to function independently.
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Hasselblad Group, the leader in high-quality professional cameras, and DJI, the world’s most-innovative aerial technology company, today announced a corporate partnership through DJI’s acquisition of a strategic minority stake in Hasselblad.
If you’re wondering just how iconic Hasselblad is, look no further than its boast of being the first camera on the moon, capturing Neil Armstrong in a shot taken by Buzz Aldrin on the first human walk on the moon with Apollo 11 back in 1969. Frank Wang, CEO of DJI, says the same in so many words.
To be clear, the Canonical partnership also announced this week, which will see a new Ubuntu computer called Manifold embedded on to DJI drones, “was purely a partnership based on technology”, with no financial stake, the spokesperson says. The Chinese company is constantly looking at ways to improve its imaging technology in a bid to stay ahead of competitors and increase its appeal among professional filmmakers, and with Hasselblad now on board, it’ll be hoping to make serious progress on that front in the years ahead.
The partnership is bound to leave many well-known brands in the dark, namely GoPro Inc. But the fact that DJI is a leading drone manufacturer makes a collaboration between its machines being bolstered by the iconic camera brand, Hasselblad, imminent.
Considering that both companies have a history in aerial photography, this is bound to get interesting.
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DJI making strategic investments in the wider ecosystem of components that (literally and figuratively) make the drone market fly may be a way of building the greater market, but it is also a way of locking in the more promising companies that work in the space into DJI’s own ecosystem in a more direct way, above that of its competitors. The news is further evidence of the fact Hasselblad has continually reinvented itself by partnering a modernized company. According to Perry Oosting, CEO of Hasselblad, this is the first and only time that the company has taken an outside investment since it was founded in 1941.
