A few days ago, the robot "crazy demon" SoftBank began a new action.
This time, SoftBank focused on the public health field, in April, SoftBank announced that it will strategically inject capital into The Armor Environment, and after the completion of the transaction, SoftBank Robots will own about 5% of the shares in the Armor Yao disinfection business. 2020 is a key watershed year for robots to land from the technological level to real life, and contactless services have changed the world and the luck of some industries.
Robots are a stark example, disinfection, logistics, collaboration... The plot of the mecha warrior guarding the earth has broken through the dimensional wall in turn, looking back at the enterprise side, in the past year, the number of Chinese service robot-related enterprises alone soared by 78.92%, reaching 105,000, financing 113 cases, and the total amount of financing exceeded 44 billion yuan. In recent years, SoftBank's robot empire has frequently cracked, and the famous Pepper was discontinued for a time.
To this day, the wind blows again. Just in 2021, global service robot sales reached $14.6 billion, with an annual growth rate of 32.2%, creating a peak growth rate since 2016.
Fist to death teacher Fu, SoftBank is also a little anxious.
Son's "Astro Boy" has not yet been born
SoftBank has a total of two heavy ink in the field of robotics, one is that in 2015, Pepper officially began to sell to the market, this robot known as the "emotional engine" once pinned on Son Zhengyi's beautiful expectations for Astro Boy, as a child because of a comic, the robot dream took root in Sun Zhengyi's heart.
The second is in 2017, when SoftBank acquired Boston Dynamics for $921 million. However, these two big moves that are enough to blind the robot circle in the eyes of outsiders did not perfectly hatch Sun Zhengyi's Astro Boy, and from the perspective of commercialization, it can even be said to be a broken sand.
It is an indisputable fact that Pepper applauds or does not applaud. It is reported that since its launch around 2015, a total of only 27,000 units have been produced, because the sales price is lower than the cost price, SoftBank Robot once lost as much as $1 billion, and at the end of March 2017, the company almost fell into insolvency.
At present, there are rumors that Pepper has stopped production, and more surprisingly, SoftBank plans to lay off half of its robot company's employees in France. Boston Dynamics, more like a vase that doesn't look good, the most famous four-legged robot "Spot", has only sold about 400 units by the end of 2020, and finally SoftBank resold it to Hyundai.
Why is Pepper and Spot's journey so difficult?
Frankly speaking, due to the scarcity of labor and the serious aging of society, the application field of robots in Japan is very broad, finance, tourism, medical care industry... The line has spawned a new service model. Taking medical care as an example, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, the gap between supply and demand of nursing staff in Japan will be about 380,000 people in 2025, and the Japanese robot market is expected to be $49 billion in 2025 and $91 billion in 2035.
The market seems to be huge, but the crux of Son Zhengyi's delay in success lies in this. In fact, looking at the world, the penetration rate of robots is insignificant, Morgan Stanley's report shows that the current global robot penetration rate is only 0.9%, robots account for about 1% of the labor market, and the robot penetration rate may reach 7%-18% by 2040.
Confined to the domestic market, SoftBank had a hard time finding a global customer base. On the other hand, the emotional engine emphasized by Pepper may not necessarily cause a carnival of artificial intelligence, and the ethical boundary between carbon-based organisms and silicon-based organisms, although somewhat unfounded, is always a little sensitive when it comes to business.
It is reported that the robot products sold by SoftBank to enterprises have basically closed the emotional ability. It is worth noting that as early as 1999, Sony had launched a family companion robot dog AIBO with a concept similar to Pepper,000, but in seven years, AIBO only sold 150,000 units worldwide, and the end was the same as Pepper's disease.
As for Boston Dynamics, it is expected that a robot priced at nearly 500,000 yuan will fall into a cold silence in the current market. The research and development of bionic robots is a punk dream that technology fans can't abandon, but for capital, disproportionate investment and income are doomed to fail to pay for this ultimate game.
From 2015 to now, seven years have been wrongly paid. But Son Zhengyi still has not given up his Astro Boy, public information shows that SoftBank currently invests in about 300 artificial intelligence-related unicorn companies, of which 18 are directly related to robots, and Boston Dynamics, although sold to Hyundai, SoftBank still retains 20% of the shares.
Son's Astro Boy has not yet been born, but it is clear that SoftBank has no intention of giving up.
SoftBank is still waiting for a "scenario"?
There is no doubt that Son Zhengyi is still waiting for an opportunity for astro boy to appear. But when and where to make the robot landing a reality in the general sense, not only Sun Zhengyi, but countless people are speculating and waiting. A survey result was published in the journal Scientific Robotics that the risk of automation will increase in 1,000 jobs in the future.
McKinsey's related report also shows that the early application of automation will cause 220 million workers to change jobs and replace 516 billion working hours. In the past two years, medical care, logistics, warehousing, education... Various industries outline the looking up of capital to the robot industry. Although there is not yet a head brand that has come out to provide a sample for the entire industry, capital obviously does not want to continue to dive, and this road will eventually continue.
Today's SoftBank, recreating the robot empire is somewhat headless, and the money has always been the most eye-catching label of Son Zhengyi in the field of investment. Where will the application scenario of robots erupt? Until there is no clear answer, it seems that only luck can be seen.
In addition to public healthcare, SoftBank is also aggressively attacking smart services such as warehousing and education. Warehousing automation has been nurtured by the logistics and e-commerce industries for nearly a decade, and in April last year, shortly after selling Boston Dynamics, SoftBank spent $2.8 billion to acquire a 40 percent stake in the AutoStore System, which focuses on warehouse robotics.
AutoStore has 20,000 robots in 35 countries, and its customers include a global blue-chip customer base such as Puma, Best Buy and Siemens. At the same time, SoftBank has also announced a partnership with RobertLAB, which focuses on education, to develop foodservice robots with Japanese electronics manufacturer Iris Ohyama, and to invest in Bear Robotics transportation robots...
Although the previous plans have been adrift, it seems that as long as it is related to the robot, it will be within the consideration of SoftBank, Son Zhengyi has always been strong, and acted crazy, and the anxiety about the robot is even more on the paper. This eagerness is not difficult to understand, the robot war continues to advance with unmanned services, and the capital of various countries is no slower than SoftBank.
According to the "Insight 2021 - Emerging Industry Investment Opportunities" report, in the segmented field, the investment amount in the field of public service robots and medical robots is more, accounting for 49.7% and 23.7% of the total amount, respectively. Just professional cleaning robots, the most common sanitize robots in real life, and 50 companies around the world can provide such terminal equipment.
Warehousing is a battleground for services to robotics, and PitchBook data shows that the amount of venture capital injected into warehouse automation companies around the world will more than double in 2020.
It is not difficult to see that the global robots are waiting, according to the mcKinsey Global Institute's prediction, by 2025, the global robot application will produce an annual economic impact of 1.70 to 4.50 trillion US dollars, it is conceivable that the crazy and anxious technology maniacs like Son Zhengyi are lurking in all corners of the world.
This field has been full of twists and turns, and SoftBank has gone from being full of confidence to panicking, in fact, there are not a few years in total. The current move is uncertain, in fact, the appetite of capital is exposed, and a tense and delicate situation is slowly spreading in the global robot market.
SoftBank needs the Chinese market, but China doesn't necessarily need SoftBank
As early as 2013, China's robots ranked at the world's largest market share and maintained continuous growth year by year. In 2018, the total consumption of China's optical industry robots was as high as 135,000 units, becoming the world's largest consumer market for six consecutive years, the service field, due to the rise of the domestic intelligent service end boom, it is expected that by 2025, intelligent personal terminal assistants will cover 90% of the population.
Admittedly, SoftBank's business sense is very keen. Since last year, Son Zhengyi has been particularly optimistic about the Chinese market, not only the market, SoftBank also especially supports Chinese companies, successively leading the investment in Youai Zhihe, Siling Robot, Qinglang Intelligence, as if to put the aura of capital on the head of domestic enterprises.
China's artificial intelligence market carries many dreams of Son Zhengyi, and looking at the world, Sun Zhengyi's choice is undoubtedly rational and correct. According to the "2020 Hurun Global Unicorn List", there are 63 unicorns in the artificial intelligence industry with a global valuation of more than 1 billion US dollars, of which 1/3 are from China, and behind many domestic AI unicorns, there is no shortage of SoftBank urgent footprints.
On the other hand, the domestic artificial intelligence demand market gradually showed a trend of foreign micro national strength, taking the robot field as an example, there was a long time, domestic and foreign brands and local independent brands shared this huge market, until these two years have not changed, in 2018, foreign robots sold 91908 units in China, down 10.98% year-on-year.
On the contrary, China's own brand robot sales of 43,555 units, an increase of 16.2% year-on-year, of which industrial robot sales accounted for 32.2%, up 5.5 percentage points from 2017. This also means that the difficulty of foreign brands to continue to gallop in the Chinese market has increased year after year, and it is not unreasonable for SoftBank to favor domestic enterprises so much.
There is no doubt that robot companies burn money quickly, and Rao is Boston Dynamics can not fill one hole after another, which is the key to capital control of the robot market.
The most important place in the domestic robot field is in the parts, because the key components were once controlled by overseas, and the production cost was difficult to reduce. A research report by GF Securities shows that the proportion of reducers, controllers and servo motors in the total cost of robots is close to 70%, and the import cost of a reducer is about 3 to 4 times the price of foreign countries.
However, it is gratifying that the replacement rate of domestic parts has gradually increased. The data shows that the total number of robot-related patents accepted in China is 162485, accounting for 44% of the total number of robot-related patent applications that have been published in the world, and the number of upstream technology patent applications is relatively large, reaching 37%.
The basic quotation of a certain type of foreign robot is 200,000-300,000 yuan, and the price of a robot with the same performance in China has been less than 30,000 yuan. At the same time, the speech of the 2021 World Robot Conference also mentioned that in the entire robot industry chain, whether it is the upstream underlying hardware, from AI chips, servo servos, reducers, sensors and other technologies, China has the world's longest industrial chain.
Costs have come down, technology is in place, once the company can rely on itself, SoftBank wants to borrow the mainland to realize Son Zhengyi's robot dream may not be easy. What's more, Sun Zhengyi has a strong interest in artificial intelligence, domestic capital is obviously not vegetarian, for now, Tencent, Millet, Byte have poured out, SoftBank's opportunities are even more slim.
The Tao is always reasonable, and has used the name Crooked Dao, the Internet and the new media in the science and technology circle. The WeChat public account of the same name: Dao always has a reason (daotmt). This article is an original article, and any form of reproduction without retaining the author's relevant information is not retained.