Robot Reviews

Does the entry of a third netbook company into the floor cleaning industry signal an end to the netbook wars?

After ASUS and Acer, MSI is now the third netbook company that has launched a robot specializing in floor cleaning.

Except for a slight modification at the back, the MSI robot looks extremely similar to an iRobot Roomba. Now, if there’s one feature that caught my attention when I first saw a video of it (you can watch it at the bottom of this post), it’s the MSI robovac’s ability to avoid bumping a wall before changing direction. According to the spokesperson in the video, the MSI robot is using sonar to do this.

We hope to feature this robot in another post but right now, we’d like to focus on the side stories of MSI’s entry into the robotic vacuum cleaning business.

First it was ASUS. Well, technically, Acer’s heavy investment in iRobot, which arguably lured ASUS into the robotic vacuum cleaner industry, may have started it all. After all, ASUS once started and lorded over the netbook world before Acer came along.

This had pundits speculating that ASUS’ entry into the robovac business was just a way to pester its arch-nemesis, Acer (ASUS’ founders were once engineers at Acer), on yet another battleground.

But with MSI’s recent entry, it’s now obvious that these hi-tech companies are actually seeing a huge potential in the robovac market.

The netbook business, which began in 2007 and which quickly boomed in 2008, was dominated by these two Taiwan-based computer companies - Acer and ASUS. MSI, another Taiwan computer company, also managed to take a fair slice of that pie.

Thus, what we have now are three Taiwanese companies eager to do battle on the floor, and quite literally this time. It should make perfect sense to them because the line dividing netbooks and laptops has all but completely vanished. Unlike a pure netbook market, the laptop market has a lot of players, making it less attractive.

By contrast, the robovac market is still in it's infancy, and there are still plenty of floors to clean.

You have no doubt heard of the iRobot Roomba. Because of its investment in iRobot, Acer has a considerable upper hand at this point in time (coincidentally, it also held the number one spot in the netbook business), and may probably do so for quite a while.

iRobot has already managed to sell over 5 million robots, while ASUS only launched its own robotic vacuum cleaner late last year. It’s difficult to conclude who among the two (ASUS or MSI) are going to take second place - remember there are also other contenders: Samsung, Neato Robotics, and Evolution Robotics being the most prominent.