One could argue the classic path of technology is to bring to everybody what was once available only to the ultra rich. There was a nice infographic on how an iPhone replaced roughly a million worth of equipment in the 90s.

The ultra-rich heli market may be small in relative terms, but it's there. Much easier to expand it 100x than to build a new one. And once you do, you're in a good position to try something else - your tech is proven, you have a fleet, you're bringing in cash.

The iPhone analogy is a bit of a stretch. I'm not sure what "millions of equipment" it replaced. If you're referring to software, the PC or Blackberry was already accessible to those who weren't ultra-rich.

As for the heli market, the vehicle holds one person, not 2+, and can't fly as far as a heli. But it is less about consumer demand and more about the infrastructure, excessive noise, airspace constraints, and the dozens of other public-facing issues that would arise with any attempt at expanding that market.

Helicopters have already been greatly restricted / banned in some cities, particularly NYC.

Mostly for noise, and safety. Those blades slicing past worry people.

It is hard to believe these will be very much quieter than a chopper.

Safety particularly. In 1977 on the heliport of the Pan Am building (aka the MetLife building), a helicopter's landing gear broke which caused the helicopter to tip over and the rotor to break. Pieces of the rotor killed four people on the roof, fell to the street below, and killed another person on the ground. It took emergency responders about an hour to get onto the roof because the elevators in the building shut down. The public was already wary of the danger of helicopters (as well as being annoyed by the noise), and this incident confirmed their fears. Since then, heliports on buildings in NYC have been severely restricted, for a time banned completely, I believe, but 3 rooftop heliports are still active in NYC.

Another helicopter crash in 2019 suggests another danger. A helicopter crash landed on the roof of a skyscraper and caught fire. The pilot was the only person killed that time, but it took firefighters about an hour to put the fire out. They apparently got it under control without too much difficulty and were lauded for a quick response.. but what if that helicopter had been packed full of lithium batteries? Lithium battery car fires are notoriously hard to put out. Such a fire on the roof of a tall building seems like a serious concern to me.

There are 3 heliports in NYC (West 30th Street Heliport, Downtown Heliport / Wall Street Heliport, TSS / 34th Street Heliport), but there are _no_ rooftop heliports since the 1977 accident.

There is no way the iPhone replaces equipment valued at 1M.

"valued at 1M ten years ago". If you add up stuff like GPS, sat phone, camera, video conferencing gear and so on, it gets expensive fast. We've had all of that stuff for decades, it's just nobody could afford it.

But the iPhone didn't replace that stuff. There's still so much software and infrastructure involved. For example, you can't do video conferencing on 3G. The iPhone didn't bring with it 4G LTE

I wouldn't be surprised if some $1M dollar piece of equipment was replicated in a smart phone.

Hell, the blue led was invented in the 90s, how much would you value the first blue led at?