I was excited when I read this headline on Roland Piquepaille's blog Robots Sales Are Exploding." A United Nations Economic Commission for Europe claims Robot orders were up 26% in the first half of 2003 with household Robots "taking off."
After years of enthusiasm and SciFi articles in popular magazines, could this be the decade of the Robot? According to a report the group published, there are currently 770,000 Robots at work worldwide, 50,000 domesticated Robots (lawnmowers, vacuum cleaners, etc), and another 550,000 Robots that have been sold over the years for personal "entertainment" (hobby Robots, Robot toys, etc).
At first these numbers sounded pretty good to me. And then I started thinking about it in terms of the number of Tablet PCs--which recent reports have placed at 400,000. So although there are definitely more Robots than Tablet PCs, you really have to take into account the maturity of these two markets. The Robot industry has been limping along for a couple decades and Tablet PCs have only been around for a year. The Tablet PC numbers sound pretty good when taken in this light.
The press release of the report gives a high-level breakdown of the numbers of Robots in the business and home markets. I haven't seen a similar breakdown for Tablet PCs. It would be interesting to see who's purchasing Tablet PCs.
Posted by Loren at October 24, 2003 10:29 AM