Roomba maker iRobot doubts it can survive the next 12 months

[Shawn Knight]

The big picture: iRobot, best known for its Roomba brand of robotic vacuum cleaners and floor mops, was a pioneer in the early days of home autonomy. For a while, the Roomba name itself became synonymous with robotic vacuums and many erroneously thought it was actually the company's name. Now, iRobot has warned investors that it might not survive the next 12 months as it continues to explore the possibility of a sale or a strategic partnership.

iRobot's success spawned a whole new industry, and it didn't take long for competitors to bring rival cleaning bots to market – often at lower price points or with more features. In the midst of a shifting landscape, iRobot in the summer of 2022 agreed to sell its business to Amazon as part of an all-cash deal valued at $1.7 billion, or $61 per share. At the time, the deal represented a 22 percent premium over iRobot's share price.

The good times, however, would not last. Roughly a year and a half later, Amazon terminated what would have been its fourth largest acquisition at that time. It was the first time the Bezos-founded e-commerce giant had failed to complete a purchase, and it all came down to regulation. In short, Amazon did not believe it had a path to gaining approval from European Union regulators. As we've seen in the past, it's often better to cut your losses than to try and fight a regulatory battle.

It's mostly been a downhill journey ever since. Last year, iRobot laid off more than half of its workforce as part of a restructuring that also involved lowering sales and marketing expenses through consolidation, and decreasing inventory and cash outflow.

Revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 reached $172.9 million, down 44 percent from $307.5 million during the same period a year ago. Full-year revenue dipped to $681.8 million, down from $890.6 million in 2023. Shares in iRobot, which once topped out at around $133 in 2021, are currently trading for just $4.06.

Image credit: Frank Minjarez, Kindel Media

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Roomba maker iRobot doubts it can survive the next 12 months

 

[NumberNine]

Don't worry my friends, if all else fails try typing PICK UP BROOM followed by USE BROOM ON FLOOR. Those two commands could usher you into a new era of technological independence. For best results, follow it up by looking at a mop and using the same two commands on it.

 

[Thatsdisgusting]

I am a proud user of i7+ for almost 8 years, and I can tell you iRobot is in shambles, for a long time, judging by the state of their software.

From the latest, roomba now roams through rooms leaning by ~20 degrees from straight line, and after every cleaning it abominates floor plan with unbelievable walls, passes and rooms. Now it's roomba map resembles more of a skyrim dungeoun than my house.

F* bezos and indian devs.

 

[DrSuess]

There are a lot of Chinese knock off cleaning robots available at a lower price point, that has to have been affecting their bottom line.

 

[return]

Buy industrial hoovers. All others suck at sucking.

 

[pnntmp]

Seriously, vacuum cleaners need approvals from European Union regulators ???

The EU is truly grotesque ... regulation of everything, including regulation.

 

[Squid Surprise]

I am a proud user of i7+ for almost 8 years, and I can tell you iRobot is in shambles, for a long time, judging by the state of their software.

From the latest, roomba now roams through rooms leaning by ~20 degrees from straight line, and after every cleaning it abominates floor plan with unbelievable walls, passes and rooms. Now it's roomba map resembles more of a skyrim dungeoun than my house.

F* bezos and indian devs.

So you’re blaming Bezos for NOT buying them?

 

[Theinsanegamer]

There are a lot of Chinese knock off cleaning robots available at a lower price point, that has to have been affecting their bottom line.

The Chinese ones are also just plain better. The nicer ones have better apps, far better mapping capability, ece.

irobot has been in trouble for awhile now. If they dont have any innovation sitting in the back, they're probably gonna sink.

 

[Mister_K]

Seriously, vacuum cleaners need approvals from European Union regulators ???

The EU is truly grotesque ... regulation of everything, including regulation.

Then there is the US. Get sued every 5 meters, shot every 4 and every 3 meters you got someone trying to f-you-over due to lack of regulation.

 

[p51d007]

And all of those overpriced "robots" will most likely STOP working once the software is turned off on
the server.

 

[dangh]

Seriously, vacuum cleaners need approvals from European Union regulators ???

The EU is truly grotesque ... regulation of everything, including regulation.

Oh how dare they promote competition instead allowing mega corpo to be even bigger... Lol.

 

[airbornex]

Pioneering an entire industry just to get outpriced and out-featured by no-name brands on AliExpress... the Roomba didn’t clean up the competition—competition cleaned up the Roomba.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Oh how dare they promote competition instead allowing mega corpo to be even bigger... Lol.

Placing roadblocks to new products is "promoting competition" now? LOL.

 

[pnntmp]

Then there is the US. Get sued every 5 meters, shot every 4 and every 3 meters you got someone trying to f-you-over due to lack of regulation.

This is simply nonsense. But if it were true, do you think regulating domestic vacuum cleaners is the way to fix it? So that no one can suck-you-over due to lack of vacuum regulation?

 

[pnntmp]

Oh how dare they promote competition instead allowing mega corpo to be even bigger... Lol.

Blocking new competitors is the exact opposite of promoting competition.

Generally speaking, the "mega corpo" is the main beneficiary of regulation. The more bureaucracy there is on the government side, the more bureaucracy is necessary to match it on the private sector side. Usually the incumbents (or "mega corpo") are the only ones who can pay an army of lawyers, 'experts' and assorted other paper-pushers to tick boxes and fill forms. Startups can't afford that.
Have you asked yourself why are there so few successful startups in Europe?

 

[noblody]

Placing roadblocks to new products is "promoting competition" now? LOL.

There was no roadblock to new products. Amazon simply did not believe that they could get the approval from the EU regulation body to buy Roomba. USA also regulates mergers and acquisitions.

 

[Loadedaxe]

There was no roadblock to new products. Amazon simply did not believe that they could get the approval to buy Roomba from the EU regulation body. USA also regulates mergers and acquisitions.

Beat me to it, I was starting to wonder if anyone understood the article.

 

[j4ni1]

There are a lot of Chinese knock off cleaning robots available at a lower price point, that has to have been affecting their bottom line.

Those chinese brands like roborock or Dreame are miles ahead of them now. They are not knock offs, but established themselfs as the high end of the market segment.

 

[VitalyT]

They priced themselves out of business, allowing cheap Chinese products take over. A few years back, I was considering to buy one, but the top model was like $1200, which I thought was just too much, when I could buy a regular vacuum cleaner for $50.

 

[Darth Shiv]

I am a proud user of i7+ for almost 8 years, and I can tell you iRobot is in shambles, for a long time, judging by the state of their software.

From the latest, roomba now roams through rooms leaning by ~20 degrees from straight line, and after every cleaning it abominates floor plan with unbelievable walls, passes and rooms. Now it's roomba map resembles more of a skyrim dungeoun than my house.

F* bezos and indian devs.

Err he didn't buy them mate

 

[Darth Shiv]

Blocking new competitors is the exact opposite of promoting competition.

Generally speaking, the "mega corpo" is the main beneficiary of regulation. The more bureaucracy there is on the government side, the more bureaucracy is necessary to match it on the private sector side. Usually the incumbents (or "mega corpo") are the only ones who can pay an army of lawyers, 'experts' and assorted other paper-pushers to tick boxes and fill forms. Startups can't afford that.
Have you asked yourself why are there so few successful startups in Europe?

This is just junk. The big corps are the ones that roll back regulation in the US. Like water regulation, safety and so on.

 

[lonetac]

This is just junk. The big corps are the ones that roll back regulation in the US. Like water regulation, safety and so on.

Exactly. Hello, anyone watching what Elon is doing right now? lol. Its happening in real time. Fired five inspector generals inspecting him, gee.

 

[pnntmp]

This is just junk. The big corps are the ones that roll back regulation in the US. Like water regulation, safety and so on.

That's exactly what I'm saying. Big corps control the regulation.

Sometimes they want it off, but in the vast majority of the cases they try to impose as many and as absurd regulations as possible, because they are the only ones that can deal with it - no one else has the necessary resources. This is known as regulatory capture - through regulation, big corps safeguard the market for themselves and keep small competitors / startups out. When a startup can't jump over the regulatory barrier, it either dies or some of the big corps buys it.

 

[mbrowne5061]

I am a proud user of i7+ for almost 8 years, and I can tell you iRobot is in shambles, for a long time, judging by the state of their software.

From the latest, roomba now roams through rooms leaning by ~20 degrees from straight line, and after every cleaning it abominates floor plan with unbelievable walls, passes and rooms. Now it's roomba map resembles more of a skyrim dungeoun than my house.

F* bezos and indian devs.

iRobot's software devs are based at their headquarters in Massachusetts. Also, the app only updates your floor map if you try to tell it to do a mapping run (which isn't done during a cleaning run)..

Though you are right that their floor mapping software still sucks. I have a couple of rooms in my house where it just clean cuts off a corner of the room, just a straight "45 degree chamfer" in one of the corners. The bot still cleans that corner, but the map pretends its not actually there.

My bigger concern is the scheduling features of their app are broken. I want my bot to clean every other day, on days when it detects that I am out of the house during the hours of 8am and 10am. I don't want it to start before 8 so it doesn't disturb the neighbors, and if I leave after 10am, its because I am home that day and I left to do an errand (so I'll return before it finishes cleaning). Except the logic in the app can't handle this. Instead, it can only seem to detect when I ~leave~ between 8am and 10am, not that I left at 7am and am not presently in the house at 8am to start a run.

If they go under-under, and not get solid for scrap, I hope they are able to decouple robot controls from their servers, so that everyone who still has their products can at least control them from their phone apps (or maybe release a FOSS add-on for Home Assistant?).

 

[Watzupken]

They can’t compete in any way to be honest. Software wise, Chinese bots are more advance, same goes for features. Price wise, there is no competition at all. It’s great that they started the robot vacuum, or made it more mainstream, but they clearly failed to keep up.