RoBoHon and Foxconn

A friend sent me this link to the middle of an article, and I think it's pretty interesting.

It also makes it pretty clear that MicroVision is front and center at Foxconn.



From Forbes

Continued from page 1

Making new ownership happy

Staying with marketing and signal value, RoBoHon’s arrival could hardly be better timed.

Sharp was recently acquired by Hon Hai Precision Industry – better known as Foxconn.

Nikkei Asian recently reported robotics plays an important part in Hon Hai Precision Industry’s plans of turning its $3.5 billion acquisition of Sharp into a success.

“We are talking with Sharp about how to turn both companies’ robotics technology into new consumer electronics products and we believe this is a key future direction for both companies,” Tai Jeng-wu, a high-ranking Hon Hai vice president, was quoted as saying.

Sharp has, to put it bluntly, been floundering for a while. Part of the reason has been an unwillingness to diversify away from areas such as consumer electronics.

RoBoHon could signal a fresh start, and a move towards the emerging Japanese market for social robots.

Robots and phones to mix it up in Japan?

In the space for social robots we find another member of the Japanese robot family, Pepper.

Pepper is sold through the stores of Japanese phone company Softbank. Its price tag: 198,000 Yen. Yes that is the exact same as RoBoHon.

Another similarity is that RoBoHon is going to be sold through stores of one of SoftBank’s main rivals, NTT Docomo.

It could indicate that the Japanese phone market is turning to robots as a marketing tool in the fight for the often robot-crazy Japanese consumer.

This remains a theory, but it could soon be put to the litmus test.

Hitachi is another Japanese company getting into social robots. The company recently unveiled EMIEW3, a robot it plans to sell from 2018.

If it goes on sale through one of the other big phone companies, such as AU, and comes with a price tag of 198,000 Yen. Well, then I will rest my case.