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Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

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Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#431

Post by ToucanLoucan »

prmoustache wrote: post #421
cs702 wrote: post #254

According to the Financial Times, Roomba has sold more than 40 million robotic devices, most of them robotic vacuum cleaners.[a] Many of those vacuum cleaners have cameras, can move around on their own, and are connected to the Internet. If they're taken offline, they stop working. Many have microphones too. The new Chinese owner will get control of a network of tens of millions Internet-connected, autonomously mobil…

I don't think there are tens of millions still in use. Unless you design your house and buy your furnitures taking these roomba into account, they get stuck nearly every where or at the first sock left on the ground by someone in your household. They have a number of wearable most owner will not even want to replace and will start being inefficient rather quickly. Add to that some battery wear and I don't think there…

I am one of those weirdos! I bought a roomba in 2015 and it's still going. Second battery, sixth set of rollers and brush, god knows how many filters. Mine's also a dumb one: no wifi or pathfinding, just boring old "drives around until it smacks into shit" navigation.

I gave it googly eyes in 2017 and named it Harold.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#432

Post by mnau »

legacynl wrote: post #335
mattfrommars wrote: post #322

In one of the articles, they said Roomba were greatly affected by tariffs. Well, this company has been in business for a long time and should have figured out how to build roomba in the US, that would have been great innovation. But like most US corp, they only cared about profits and stock price.

That guy from smarter every day had a great youtube video about why that's basically impossible in the US right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY I'm not a fan of big coorps either, but these changes happened gradually over time, starting way back in probably the 50/60s. The blame is with the companies and the US government back then for allowing this critical knowledge to be lost. But Roomba didn't ex…

Won't happen. In one of those videos, they showed earnings of metal workers and other such professions. It's downwards.

Unless US can solve the problem "That job doesn't pay", there is no way forward. And it can't.

It's just like a textile industry. The only way is if it's all done by robots.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#434

Post by coldpie »

intrasight wrote: post #381
coldpie wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the good news is we just destroyed our education and research sectors, too, so we'll catch up to China, uh... any day now...

I know, right? I think all we have to do is follow their lead in having near slave labor /s

That is the direction we're heading in, yes.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#435

Post by AlexandrB »

foxes wrote: post #330
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is unfortunate given China's abysmal stance on human rights, freedom of information, and pollution.

Compared to the previous dominant superpower of the last 100 years (USA)?

Yes, obviously.

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ilab/against-their-will-the-sit...

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#437

Post by novaRom »

the_real_cher wrote: post #221
lvl155 wrote: post #214

Where is Lina Khan who struck down the acquisition? Read the comments from the FTC. That was from less than two years ago. I am all for antitrust but Lina Khan was inept as they come in terms actually dealing with anti competitiveness in the tech. This is called dumping. Long-term dumping but it is what it is. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/01/...

So an American company (amazon) was going to buy iRobot, but that was struck down by the courts. Now a Chinese company is buying them and there's no problems. is that the background on that?

Shouldn't first CFIUS oversee this takeover?

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#438

Post by lm28469 »

baggachipz wrote: post #398
vjvjvjvjghv wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems to be a problem with many companies. Chinese companies are innovating aggressively while others don’t. You see that with 3d printers where Bambu is kicking ass. I remember when GoPro did a drone and it simply wasn’t good. Or American carmakers are trying to turn back the clock on electric instead of embracing it.

Chinese companies don't have quarterly financial metrics to report to shareholders, which result in severe punishment if the "growth at all costs" strategy isn't followed. This means chasing quarterly profit over innovation, because it's much easier to milk an asset for as long as possible until suddenly it isn't and you're left behind. But that doesn't matter when the pressure is entirely placed on showing financial…

They're playing the long game while we're playing the "whose dick I have to suck to get a better position in the next 5 years" at every level of the hierarchy both politically and industrially.

We moved all our factories there thinking they'd work for cheap and stay peasants forever. Meanwhile their education seriously leveled up while ours stagnated (at best) or declined. In the meantime they also mastered manufacturing techniques, and now they're slowly taking the lead over pretty much everything. Couple that with an authoritarian regime still viewing the world through the historical long term prism and you get a pretty good combo. We ended up losing the mass, know-how and innovation capabilities, all at once in ~50 years.

I hope we never have a hot conflict with them because all their drones/3d printing/thermal vision/&c. companies will produce more kamikaze drone in a day than we'll produce in a year.

Re: Roomba maker goes bankrupt, Chinese owner emerges

#440

Post by Ylpertnodi »

dwa3592 wrote: post #369

It was bound to happen. I had bought two different robo vaccums at two different times (in 2022[irobot], then 2025[eufy], both upwards of $400) - they both were pretty terrible and I ended up returning both of them. I can't believe people are still using these things. They get stuck when there is no reason to get stuck, they miss dirt that should be picked up.

And yet, mine works just fine (i7).
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