It's estimated that over 3 million personal and commercial drones will be shipped this year.

And because China is a leader when it comes to drone manufacturing, we can already see widespread use of drone technology throughout various industries in the country. Market revenue for drones is expected to surpass $6 billion by this year and that's an increase of about 34 percent from last year.

The current drone leader in the industry is DJI and they account for roughly 70-85 percent of the market.

DJI is credited with taking top spot because they are said to offer better products, coupled with lower prices. DJI is one of the most prominent drone makers and they are greatly contributing to growing the industry at a rapid pace.

Though hobbyists continue to push strong drone sales, we can see that drones are also being used heavily in professional commercial settings in a variety of creative ways.

Health organizations are using them to deliver medical supplies, fire departments are using them to help them fight fires, football teams are using them to record their practices, they are being used to survey land, emergency services are using them for search and rescue missions, real estate agents are using them to better showcase and sell their properties, and much more.

The prevalence of drone usage throughout China is credited with effectively transforming the nation. These drones are already being used in China to help monitor pollution, to assist with farming, to deliver packages, and to display fireworks.

It's interesting to see that drones are said to be slowly replacing the use of fireworks there, which have been a thousand-year-old tradition in the country. People have said that they see multiple benefits to using the drones over fireworks, such as things like less pollution, less noise, and that they can be reused.

Drones have been used to conduct a number of different light shows and entertainment experiences not only in China but in other areas as well, like for the US Superbowl halftime show.

The drones in China are also being used to identify cheaters on exams and to assess the condition of disaster zones. Just this year, the SF Express courier company became the first to be afforded the permission to use drones for their logistical purposes.

At the moment there are still hundreds of different companies currently working on developing drone technology in the country and despite DJI holding a majority of the market share, many other competitors are still working to compete.

Drone technology has come a long way, where they used to be mainly associated with the military and widespread destruction, more are seeing the benefit that can come from using this technology in a non-violent way throughout dozens of different industries. Because of the versatility in the way that this technology can be used, it makes sense that drone technology would be regarded by many as one of the most important technologies of our time.