Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm

Re:Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm by beambot on Thursday October 06, 2016 @02:47PM (#12654968)

Kuka, the world's largest robot arm manufacturer, got acquired for $5B [1]. I'm not sure how that's a "small market." If Google believed in robotics (beyond autonomous cars), which seems to be the case given the acquisitions, then they need to start somewhere.

Universal Robotics was demonstrably worth $300M with (what sounds like) a more-or-less similar product. That seems like a good place to start -- and all big unicorn products start somewhere; very few jump straight from $0 to $Billions.

[1] http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-midea-group-announces-bid...

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Re:Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm by gregpilling on Friday October 07, 2016 @01:33AM (#12658408)

One of the biggest robot companies in the world, and its only worth $5 billion? Yes, it is a small market if that statement is true. Which is a shame. Kuka robots are amazing, and capable of welding together cars to being rides at Legoland. And yet, one of the premier robotics companies in the world is worth less than 10% of Uber.

Robots are still hard to use, hopefully soon this will change. Then the market will get big. The robot arms are already precise enough, they need volume manufacturing to get cheaper.

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Re:Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm by sharemywin on Thursday October 06, 2016 @02:59PM (#12655082)

Google's market cap $500+B so if they hit a home run their market cap will only go up 1-2%.

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Re:Google Canceled the Launch of a Robotic Arm by beambot on Thursday October 06, 2016 @03:29PM (#12655334)

Until Google created AdWords, you could say the same about online search and sem ads too. All frontier markets start small and become big over time.

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