PrimeBOT built 10,000 home robots in six weeks. Built, not sold.
The Chinese personal-robot brand says unit 10,000 left the line on 8 November, two weeks after unit 5,000. It has not said how many are in homes.
PrimeBOT, the personal-robot brand of Shanghai-listed Swancor Advanced Materials, says robot number 10,000 came off its production line on 8 November. Number 5,000 was built on 25 October, so the second five thousand took 14 days. The company puts daily capacity at 240 robots, up from just over 200 two weeks earlier.
Sales of the Q1 and T1 models opened on 20 September at 19,999 yuan each. The first robots were handed over on 1 October in seven Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Shenzhen and Hangzhou. Lens Technology, the glass and assembly supplier to Apple and Samsung, co-developed the robots and builds them with PrimeBOT.
The number to watch
Ten thousand is robots built, not robots in living rooms. PrimeBOT has not published sales, deliveries or returns, so the milestone tells you how fast the factory ramped, not how many homes have one. The usage figures the company quotes, 98 percent of users active every month and three hours of use a day, are its own and unaudited. Co-president Liu Dongfang calls 10,000 units the commercial inflection point for robots in the home and names 100,000 and then a million as the next targets. Watch for a delivery number.
