"New bot, who dis?"... The new Roomba s9+ and Braava Jet m6. These frustratingly named hardwares were just launched by iRobot to clean your home together. Vacuuming, mopping, dusting — They "talk to each other." Founded by MIT grads in 1990, iRobot is one of the few publicly-traded robotic companies pumping out consumer products you actually use.
Can we please talk about the “immediate addressable market”?... That's not all the customers iRobot could target (aka everyone with a home with floors). It's the customers who fit its ideal profile — humans with homes who live tech-forward, clean-always lifestyles. iRobot really wants to talk about its immediate addressable market crew:
- It's already got 14M US households as customers.
- Its immediate addressable market is 25M more households.
- If it gets those Americans iRobot-ing, that could triple sales.
- One catch: Its freakishly self-sufficient $1,300 vacuums are made in China. They're already getting hit by tariffs, and China's competing with lower cost knockoffs.
It's a cleaning/grooming company... And it may only be that. iRobot started with the Roomba vacuum. Then its Brava mop/duster came second. Product line #3 is "Terra," the lawn mowing robot coming soon. But iRobot doesn't seem interested in roboticizing other human activities we don't like to do:
- Military robots: Until 2016, iRobot made rovers with robotic arms that could do dangerous things (they were built to be used on Mars). But it sold that line.
- Delivery robots: Postmates created a robot named "Serve" for restaurant delivery, but iRobot hasn't shown interest in the fast-growing delivery industry.