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Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

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Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#21

Post by nobodyandproud »

temp0826 wrote: post #17
nobodyandproud wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Vorwerk group. No idea, but it’s pointless imho.

Roborock and Eufy (and other competitors) clearly either stole or reverse-engineered the tech.

If the IP had enough value then I’m sure Vorwerk would’ve pursued it in court.

But here we are.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#23

Post by wincy »

IgorPartola wrote: post #16

I 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 o…

I was agreeing with you on all accounts but seriously doubt they’ll be open source. I think the average person will barely clock this as mattering, and will pay up. The market has shown time and again that consumers prefer highly integrated environments that work seamlessly vs open source, especially for hardware.

I also agree it’d be worth more to me than my car, and I’d hope much like modern cars such an expensive consumer purchase will end up with similar warranty protections and eventually a third party market for replacement parts.

Much like cars, I’m guessing it’ll be a better idea to go with a large company that’ll be able to honor that warranty without being financially ruined. The first few generations will see lots of experimentation and thus be more risky for the consumer before the market settles out with a few big winners (as is often the case).

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#24

Post by _ea1k »

krackers wrote: post #6
hurturue wrote: post #3

They outsourced production to China thinking that they can just do the marketing in US. Now they learnt that Chinese can do marketing too.

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...

Yeah, this company went through an amazingly bad period. They quite innovating, and also worked really hard to segment their products in a way that would extract every last $ out of the consumer. "Oh you want it not to run into things? You'll need one more step up for another $100-200" It wasn't really based on the hardware, so much as the intentional limitations of the software.

Meanwhile cheap roborocks had no arbitrary limitations and more honest marketing.

I miss the optimism that this company used to have, but I won't miss the entity that they became.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#27

Post by CrossVR »

sudosysgen wrote: post #20

iRobot'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.

Reminds me of a certain self-driving car company.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#28

Post by lazide »

krackers wrote: post #6
hurturue wrote: post #3

They outsourced production to China thinking that they can just do the marketing in US. Now they learnt that Chinese can do marketing too.

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...

I haven't seen a useful innovation in a robovacuum for at least a decade. What are you talking about?

Biggest issue has been the flood of cheap chinese units on the market - like GoPro, they had nowhere to go, and got beat on price once feature parity was achieved (which didn't take that long).

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#30

Post by sudosysgen »

nobodyandproud wrote: post #21
temp0826 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Vorwerk group. No idea, but it’s pointless imho. Roborock and Eufy (and other competitors) clearly either stole or reverse-engineered the tech. If the IP had enough value then I’m sure Vorwerk would’ve pursued it in court. But here we are.

There is not much tech to steal here. 2D lidar mapping is something a high schooler could do 10+ years ago, and that was their core tech. The value was in executing earlier and better, and applying existing tech to robovacuums. If they could have sued they likely would, this is a valuable market.
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