Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
11–20 of 839 posts
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#12Non-paywalled article: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-15/robot-vac...
Non-paywalled: https://archive.md/7DyNA
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#13So the FTC blocked Amazon's acquisition of iRobot in January 2024 and now China gains control of the assests for a bargain? Another stupid application of antitrust.
From Bloomberg:
> Earnings began to decline since 2021 due to supply chain headwinds and increased competition.
I know that there's a slight difference between Chinese-state owned enterprises and Amazon, but isn't a sale to either one worrying?
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#14robot vacuums never made economic sense over a maid service
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#15Makes sense, 20 years of needing to have no rugs, cords, toys on the floor, masquerading as a cleaner
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#16I had a Roomba about 10 years ago. It was OK but required a lot of “handholding” to not run over cords, kids toys, etc. It just was not really worth it to use it in an environment where you can’t keep everything nailed down and off the floor at all times. Relocated it to a basement level where we had much more empty but sill finished space. The cat angrily pooped just outside her litter box and the Roomba ran right over it and shredded them turds all over the floor. Since then it has lived in my mind as the dumbest smart product.
The real problem for me has been that I want something to straighten out my living spaces, not to vacuum the floors. Vacuuming is quick and a good vacuum cleaner (old school bagged kind, not a silly filter one), will do a far better job than a little battery powered gizmo anyways. But a robot capable of picking up the toys my kids like to leave out, or bringing abandoned coffee mugs to the sink (can you tell I live with multiple adults and children?) would be worth quite a bit to me. A robot capable of washing my dishes and putting away my laundry would be worth more. One capable of preparing meals would be worth more to me than a car.
Of course they would have to be 100% open source with easily replaceable and repairable components, which is where I think most of these types of projects go wrong. I remember seeing the Chefee demo and it was very cool but the main problem is that you aren’t buying a product, you are investing in the idea that the company behind it won’t go belly up in two years and brick your $60,000 chef/cabinet/fridge thing and that it won’t sell itself to e.g. Google which will cram it full of ads and spyware.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not just marketing, iRobot basically stopped innovating. For commodity items like robot vacuums or pool cleaners, there is a relentless pressure to innovate. You can't simply coast or else you will soon find yourself left behind. This is a good article to describe the viewpoint of Chinese iRobot competitor https://kr-asia.com/at-usd-90-per-unit-seauto-is-quietly-swe...
The best robovac was Neato. Lidar and mapping 13 years ago. No cloud. Too bad our American leaders sold us out.
It's pretty crazy just how much better the Neatos were than brand new ones. I wonder if that (German?) company has tried to sell the IP? RIP...
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#18I wonder what happens to the app and cloud functionality.
> Under the restructuring, vacuum cleaner maker Shenzhen PICEA will receive the entire equity stake in the reorganized company. The company’s common stock will be wiped out under the proposed Chapter 11 plan.
Hopefully they keep the lights on.
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#19So the FTC blocked Amazon's acquisition of iRobot in January 2024 and now China gains control of the assests for a bargain? Another stupid application of antitrust.
From Bloomberg: > Earnings began to decline since 2021 due to supply chain headwinds and increased competition. I know that there's a slight difference between Chinese-state owned enterprises and Amazon, but isn't a sale to either one worrying?
In what sense is a sale to Amazon “worrying” compared to bankruptcy?
Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges
#20iRobot's failure is that they made a bet to use CV instead of Lidar for their mapping robots for a long time until it was too late. That made their affordable, non-mapping robots far far worse than only slightly higher priced lidar robots, while their mapping robots were too expensive for mass appeal and were still worse at navigation than up-market lidar based robots. Ultimately they were simply outcompeted.