Floor Care Robotics Market Surges in 2017

Though in terms of shipments it is the second largest segment of the consumer robotics market (MD-CROB-104), homecare robots (exemplified by iRobot) are the primary revenue driver for the market. What is more, based on ABI Research’s recent forecasts, that growth is tipped to accelerate, following a banner year of revenue and shipment growth from floor care market leader iRobot. From 2016 to 2017, iRobot’s yearly revenue jumped from US$2.93 billion to US$3.69 billion, a major increase on returns from previous years.

While iRobot dominates the American and European markets, Chinese manufacturers such as Ecovacs are beginning to post comparable shipment figures, and long term, Asia-Pacific will closely match North America and Europe in market share for homecare robots, with a projected 32.3% market share by 2026. Overall, the total floor care market had expanded from US$4.7 billion in 2014 to US$9.7 billion in 2017.

Pool cleaning robots have begun to expand in popularity, with Israeli-centered market leader Maytronics recently expanding to the American market and posting double-digit growth over a consistent time frame. The company claims to have some 40% of the market revenue for pool cleaning robots, but it is not alone.

Homecare robots are already the primary driver of revenue for the wider consumer robotics market, and that trend is expected to increase. From 2016 to 2026, the homecare share of shipments for the consumer robotics market will rise from 22.1% to 41.7%, but their share of revenue will increase from 58.8% to 66.4%.

By contrast, the toys and entertainment segment will decline in market share. Their share of shipments will decrease from 75% in 2014 to 47.1% in 2026 (still the largest segment), while their share of revenue will crater from 31.7% to 10% in the same period.

The reason for this relative decline is in part a question of semantics. In this same period, personal/social robots are expected to increase their market share of revenue from virtually nothing to 21.3% in 2026. Mobile personal robots will resemble many of the higher-end entertainment robots in appearance, but will possess more advanced technologies, including cellular technology, Wi-Fi connectivity, and possibly even on-device machine learning. There are a number of toys that could already fall under the definition of personal robots, such as WowWee’s Robosapien. A further example might be Anki’s Cozmo, an educational toy robot designed to teach coding principles to children. But while toys and entertainment encompasses smart and educational toys, ABI Research’s understanding of personal robotics includes both stationary and mobile personal robots that are articulated for the purpose of facing the user, taking photos and videos of a group of people, and providing some character while communicating with the user. Examples of this include Kuri of Mayfield Robotics and the stationary ElliQ of Intuition Robotics.

This was the first consumer robotics forecast where ABI Researchbroke down forecasts for a range of technologies used within various consumer robotics sensors, segmented into computing architectures, sensors, and connectivity. This was to provide valuable insights to vendors further down the supply chain, and to better understand the capabilities that consumer robots will have in the future, particularly in relation to Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular connectivity.

When accounting for wastage and lead time, the consumer market represents a huge market for technology providers, with consumer robotics needing 505 million sensors, 104 million processors, and 277 million connectivity chipsets by 2026. To put that in perspective, the total number of technology components required within the market will increase from 221 million in 2016 to 886 million in 2026. ABI Research expects customer robots to be equipped with more onboard processing capabilities; better Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity; and machine vision for navigation, image, and facial recognition. The forecast provides more granular figures for this important part of the market, but what is clear from the findings is that the consumer robotics market, driven largely by the homecare segment, has seen expanded growth in 2017, and the most recent data points to a general increase in the growth trajectory leading up to 2026.