Will robotics manufacturers fare like car brands?

ELITE ROBOT was reported here before Christmas. The Chinese cobot manufacturer with big ambitions has probably sold about as many cobots in China as Universal Robots in 2021. For years we have known Chinese manufacturers expand first in their home country and then launch internationally. My impression is that the globalization of Chinese manufacturers starts first in neighboring countries and then in North America. In the USA, for example, ELITE ROBOT is already represented with a subsidiary. Aubo also seems to me to be more noticeable there than here. In addition to the two manufacturers mentioned, Jaka and Han's Robot are also working on their worldwide marketing. A good indication is their increasing activities in the social media channels of LinkedIn and YouTube. Both websites are insignificant in China. The addressees are therefore located outside their home country. Siasun, on the other hand, has gone quiet. The established robot manufacturer once had big goals. Sooner or later Flexiv and above all Productive Robotics could join us from the USA. The latter manufacturer already has a good reputation in the industry and could be a threat to Kassow Robots in the 7-axis niche.

The Swiss tabloid Blick recently had an interesting comparison. The Google queries for car brands were compared per country with the previous year. The changes just within a year are extreme: Our car brands Mercedes, BMW, Audi or even VW have lost their dominant role in the search, as have Ford or Toyota. Now Tesla is coming up trumps.

In robotics, not only the four Chinese cobot manufacturers mentioned above are in the starting blocks, but also the German-Chinese startups Agile Robots and Neura Robotics. So it is quite possible that there will be changes in market shares from the second half of 2022. As long as the market continues to grow strongly, the top dogs may not even notice.

Just a year earlier, the world map of car search looked like this:

If we focus only on Europe in 2021, we see that Tesla is clearly in the lead, see the picture above (screenshot Blick.ch ). However, search does not mean purchase, but increasing familiarity. Familiarity is often the prerequisite for trust. Trust, in turn, is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a purchase decision.

Andy Grove, the longtime Intel CEO, created the exclamation "Only the paranoid survive."

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The author of this blog is significantly involved in the AI/robotics project Opdra. He advises robotics companies and investors on market (entry)/ business development and funding/subsidies. More about him can be found here.