With the soft and hard legs walking, the sweeping robot can go further.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “European network” ( ID: i-yiou), author Zhao Deng,Editor Yang Xuran.
The emergence and popularity of any new thing can’t be smooth. For the sweeping robots that rush all the way, the current market slowdown signal is like a “sedative.”
Under the trend of “lazy economy”, sweeping robots sell more than you think.
In the past double eleven, sweeping robot brand Cobos omni-directional turnover of more than 780 million yuan, force Panasonic, Haier and other traditional appliance giants, ranked third in the Tmall double 11 life electrical brand list, Become a “dark horse” in the home appliance industry.
But on the road of rushing, consumers’ doubts about sweeping robots have never stopped. In various e-commerce platforms, many consumers have “unstable operation”, “clean and dead corners” and “high price”, and the word-of-mouth polarization is very serious.
This not only makes the unseen consumers feel puzzled, but even some manufacturers and investors will fall into the myth: Is the sweeping robot “pseudo-intelligence” or “true demand”?
The forerunner halo fades
Cavos is the first company in China to enter the sweeping robot industry. In May 2018, it was on the Shanghai Stock Exchange with the aura of “the first sweeper of sweeping robots”. However, its performance has fallen into successive landslides during the more than one year of listing. The embarrassing situation.
In the third quarter of 2019, Cobos’ revenue decreased by 17.18% year-on-year, and the net profit of the mother fell to a negative value, down 137.5% year-on-year. This is the net profit of its returning home for several consecutive quarters.
PeterAt the time, the price of Cobos on the Shanghai Stock Exchange was 20.02 yuan per share. After the listing, the price per share rose to 82.26 yuan. The market value exceeded 30 billion yuan. In just one year, the market value of Cobos has been higher than the original. Waist, the stock has now fallen below the price.
As a publicly traded company that also promotes emerging smart hardware products, Cobos’ experience is somewhat similar to the once-famous smart hardware star companies Gopro and Fitbit.
With the GoPro camera and the Fitbit bracelet, two of the most popular smart items, the two companies successfully listed, but the stock price has turned sharply and quickly fell, and now both are facing acquisitions. This is also the case, many people are worried about the future of the new intelligent hardware business of sweeping robots.
This kind of worry is not unfounded. The development of the sweeping robot industry in 2019 is indeed “cold and arrogant.” According to data from Aowei.com, in the first half of 2019, the growth rate of online sales of sweeping robots decreased by 7.4% compared with the same period of last year. The market demand slowed down remarkably. At the same time, the market size of vacuum cleaners was 9.12 billion yuan, a year-on-year growth rate. 24.1%, from the perspective of product structure, the sweeping robot has dragged down the vacuum cleaner market, and the “explosion” trend of the year is no longer.
Sleep out of the breakout
Compared with the downturned environment, the track sweeping robot is still getting crowded.
Many forces including international integrated home appliance companies, professional robot manufacturers, traditional home appliance giants, and Internet companies have entered the market. According to data from Ovi Cloud, in the first half of 2019, the number of online robots for sweeping robots increased to 112, while that of offline brands increased to 32. The entire domestic sweeping robot market is in a stage of competition.
Crowded tracks mean more intense competition, and companies need to run faster to stand out, but in reality, such players do not appear.
Compared with a number of service robot products, sweeping robots are not considered “high-precision”. At present, mainstream models in the market include random cleaning, planned cleaning, and navigation and construction cleaning.
The early random collision products did not have navigation function. The machine could only “what to sweep”, and the product experience was very poor. In order to achieve orderly cleaning, the sweeping robot introduced the navigation technology, and the navigation function was greatly improved. The experience of the sweeping robot has stimulated the outbreak of market demand.
(iteration of the Cobos product line)
There are two main types of navigation technology: V SLAM technology based on “visual acquisition” and LDS SLAM technology based on “laser ranging sensor”. The former uses the camera as a sensor and has been applied to the sweeping robot. Mature, the latter uses Lidar as a sensor, which is superior in navigation accuracy and higher in cost.
In September 2016, the stone technology backed by the Xiaomi ecological chain grasped the first-mover advantage of the laser navigation sweeper, and first introduced the Mijia laser navigation sweeping robot, and at the same time hit the “price-performance” card that Xiaomi used to launch. After successfully leading Stone Technology to the second place in the online retail share, the breakthrough, the impact on the market share of Cobos.
When the technology of the sweeping robot was upgraded to laser navigation, the technical update of the industry fell into stagnation. As a typical technology-driven product, the difference between the sweeping robot products became smaller and smaller, and the industry began to fall into homogenization. deadlock. A more intuitive phenomenon is that there has been no “explosion” product in the domestic market for a long time.
At the same time, the development idea of “remarketing light research and development” in domestic sweeping robot enterprises is also aggravating the homogenization of products. US roaming robot leader iRobot’s financial report data shows that its R&D expense ratio has stabilized at 12%~13% since 2013, compared with the proportion of R&D expenses of domestic head enterprises Cobos and Stone Technology in 2018. At only 3.6% and 3.82%, as a technology-driven company, such R&D investment is somewhat embarrassing.
There are more and more incoming people, and the products are getting more and more like them. The story of stone technology is hard to come on.
fall into price wars
It’s hard to find a breakthrough in products, and more companies are turning to price for growth.
In Jingdong Mall, the top ten sweeping robot products in real-time sales on November 22 were taken over by Cobos, Xiaomi and Stone Technology, and the prices of the five products were all below 2,000 yuan. In the same industry, the price of the US sweeping robot tycoon iRobot is concentrated between 3000-10000 yuan. In contrast, the domestic sweeping robot price is the “low-end” route.
In terms of price, domestic sweeping robot companies have a natural advantage. In fact, many domestic and foreign sweeping robot companies, including iRobot and Stone Technology, do not produce hardware, but adopt OEM OEM mode. Domestic OEMs for many yearsUnder the manufacturing experience, it has cultivated a complete supply chain capability of the industrial chain, while enjoying the advantages of cost, manpower and logistics in China, providing conditions for the product to form a price advantage.
This is the case, whether it is a professional sweeping robot manufacturer or a traditional home appliance giant, trying to lower the price of the product to harvest the domestic market share.
At the same time, some e-commerce platforms are entering the market, pulling down the product price to the limit range, and fighting a lot of “new brand plans” to support the sweeping robot foundry company “Home Guardian”, whose products are on the platform with a low price. Less than 150 yuan, the price stifling in the industry has intensified.
The low-cost competition sacrifices the hardware quality of the product. This is also the reason why the random collision products on the market, where to sweep, still occupy a large market share.
There are more and more problems exposed by such products: there is no way to deal with thick dust and particles, there is a clean corner in the cleaning process, and the paper, hard particles and so on often catch the passage of the robot to collect garbage… These functional defects Seriously overdraft consumer expectations for sweeping robots.
The domestic sweeping robots have been plagued by low-price competition, and companies need to find new growth points.
The stable and stable layout of the high-end market has kept iRobot in a leading position in the US market where the industry is more competitive. Chris Jones, vice president of technology at iRobot, told the media: “We don’t want to compete at low prices, but we hope to maintain leadership positions in the price range of 3,000 yuan and more than 3,000 yuan.”
In order to stabilize its high-end market positioning, iRobot first adjusted its business layout, sold its defense security business assets in early 2016, and cut off the military sector business to focus on the consumer sector.
From the financial data of 2018, iRobot’s three rates are much higher than Cobos and Stone Technology. With continuous investment in sales and R&D, iRobot has formed the technology driving force and brand premium ability of the product. The overall price of the product is significantly higher than the industry, but still enjoy a higher brand premium.
In the 2018 annual report, iRobot also made it clear that the company’s core competitiveness lies in “robot design, development and marketing” rather than “production.”
IRobot’s style of play has given domestic enterprises a revelation. Price competition is not the only way out. It is timely to get out of the comfort circle formed by the advantages of manufacturing, to make the business small, to make the products fine, and perhaps to get out of the price war.
Walk on the “soft” and “hard” legs
Today, sweeping robots are being superimposed on more and more technologies such as machine vision, speech recognition, 5G, etc., which corresponds to the evolution of sweeping robot functions. Currently, there are automatic recycling garbage, intelligent voice interaction, and air on the market. A model that purifies functions such as it.
(iRobot Roomba i7+ for automatic garbage removal)
As a smart hardware product, hardware product power is always a hard indicator for the survival of sweeping robots, but some software innovations may be more difficult to imitate or overcome than hardware technology, which also makes Internet companies represented by Xiaomi and 360 can get a big share in the industry.
They rely on powerful software and cloud service technology to collect product operation data information through the Internet of Things, and use big data to further feed back the ecology, creating more possibilities for the diversified development of the industry.
Either enterprise or consumer, everyone’s expectation for sweeping robots is far more than the current function. In the end, the future development trend of sweeping robots should be to clean people from the ground by better integrating the “soft” and “hard” strengths. Completely freed from labor.
In the face of the severe market situation since 2019, Cobos Vice Chairman Qian Cheng has made an optimistic judgment: “The current market environment can clean up some unscrupulous players and encourage enterprises to invest more in R&D and brand building. The link, when the next wave comes, will be more beneficial to us.”
When the next wave is coming, it’s not yet known, but Gopro and Fitbit’s foresight have sounded the alarm for the industry. The emergence and popularity of any new things, new products can not be smooth, more modest, less impetuous, walking with soft and hard legs, sweeping robots can go further.