If you are concerned about "Star Wars", you must know a few years ago with a movie swept the world toys BB-8.
Star Wars: The Force awakens Before the release of Disney's investment and authorized start-up company Sphero R & D designed this rolling robot The latter became famous - the BB-8 sold 22,000 units in just 12 hours in late 2015, 90% of Sphero's revenue for the previous year.
Two years later Star Wars took another shot, while Sphero did not renew its previous popularity, and according to TechCrunch, Sphero plans to lay off 45 people globally, mainly in the company's headquarters in Colorado, and also in the UK and Hong Kong offices TechCrunch did not point out the share of layoffs in the total, Sphero's home page shows the company's size '51-200 people ', 45 people is not a small number.
Sphero spokesman confirmed the news, they said the company reorganized the team on Friday is based on 2018 product strategy adjustments, 'to better meet the needs of the product.'
The more direct reason is sales, spokesman said the Christmas shopping season 'sales less than expected, we still think they are home startups, now is the right time for the transition.' Two years ago, the shopping season BB-8 average hourly selling Out of 2000 units.
After the layoffs and reorganization, Sphero will focus on educational products.After Sphero launched a platform called SPRK + Education, provided to schools and families, to guide children learn to program and manipulate the robot.
However, this has not been the Sphero's main business.B BB-8 is the beginning of Sphero, the company is also originally hatched company Disney.
After the BB-8 Sphero and more film and television companies, and Pixar Animation introduced the car racing Lightning McQueen, and Man Granville jointly launched the voice robot Spider-Man. Star Wars series until last year are also introducing new products, including R2-D2 And BB-9E. However, they did not reproduce the hot BB-8.
Last year's new R2-D2 (middle) and BB-9E (left)
Sphero seems to be aware of the problem too. The new robot company, Misty Robotics, was set up in June 2017. Ian Bernstein, co-founder and CTO of the company, is in charge of technology development and has obtained 1150 Million dollar financing.
Instead of producing children's toys, the new company focused on connected home robots, and at this time they have not yet announced a specific product plan. According to CEO Tim Enwall, their robot can perform tasks to help with housework, just like Is a machine manager.