Commercial Headwind Remains For Service Robot Makers.
Service robot makers still face headwind in commercialization. The service robot market stays at the infant stage in China, so does the other regions in the world. Nevertheless, most research institutes are optimistic about the growth of the market.
According to the Chinese Institute of Electronics, China’s top non-profit organization focusing on digital information and technology, the global sales of service robot is expected to surpass USD 12 billion in 2019, with a growth of 30.5% year on year. China is estimated to contribute around 23% to the global sales this year, with a fierce year-on-year growth of 52.1%.
UBTECH’s revenue surpassed RMB 1 billion (USD 145 million) in 2017, and this number is expected to reach RMB 6 billion (USD 871 million) in 2019, said Zhou Jian. But, all the China’s service robot makers remain in a loss, and UBTECH is no exception, said a founder of one robot company in Shenzhen.
SoftBank Robotics, the ancestor of service robot worldwide, provides one of the famous robot gadgets, Pepper, a whiting-looking removable intelligent robot, which has been employed in over 2,000 companies in the world.
However, the sales performance of Pepper chills the marketing number. SoftBank Robotics lost JPY 31.4 billion (USD 294 million) last year, as a result of the low-profit rate and high R&D cost, according to the company.
Robot makers should explore the core value of the product, concentrating on the practicality, whatever it’s humanoid or not. Such robot products massively entering families is absolutely a cock-and-bull story, said Kai-Fu Lee, founder of Sinovation Ventures.
Seven rounds of funding have driven UBTECH’s valuation to USD 10 billion after its Series C round of financing, said Zhou Jian. Many reputable banks, tech companies and investment institutes participating in the capital game, including ICBC, CMBC, Tencent, iFLYTECH, Haier, CreditEase, Telstra, Easyhome and so on.
Such high valuation probably brings a great burden to the company as it has to improve its standout commercialization ability in the coming year.