Re:Walmart drops inventory robots from its stores
by bckygldstn on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @12:50PM
(#24991294)
The tags are still much too expensive for grocery and low-end retail. The ~US$0.10 to buy and apply the tag really eats into profit for those segments, where average price is a few dollars and margins are a few percent.
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Re:Walmart drops inventory robots from its stores
by kregasaurusrex on Wednesday November 04, 2020 @01:27PM
(#24991628)
10 cents is likely closer to being the raw cost of the tag itself; the actual costs including tooling and tracking would likely make this closer to 15-20 cents per unit at scale. It's still too high for a low-margin retail environment, where you're competing with services like Amazon Go's camera systems (including the removal of overhead associated with cashiers) which have a fixed upfront cost regardless of unit volume.