Intel acquires German drone company

Intel Corp. continued its march into the rapidly growing drone market, announcing it signed a definitive agreement to acquire Krailing, Germany-based drone maker Ascending Technologies GmbH. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The acquisition is the latest in a series of investments that Intel has made in drone technology over the past year. Intel and other chip vendors, as well as consumer electronics firms, are looking increasingly at the drone market as another space where technologies that have been developed mainly for smartphones such as processing and high-quality imaging can be applied.

According to a report published last year by ABI Research, the small unmanned aerial vehicle market will be worth more than $8.4 billion by 2018. The report predicts that commercial drone revenue will grow at a CAGR of 51 percent from 2014 through 2019. By 2019, the commercial drone market will be worth roughly five times as much as the hobbyist drone market and more than twice as much as the market for military and civil service drones, according to the report.

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