More than half come from four Chinese manufacturers

In the aspirating robots segment, THE ROOM They seemed to dominate everything with iron hand. However, in recent times the situation has changed radically, and the protagonist of that revolution is China, which does not stop conquering more and more segments that seemed untouchable before.

What happened. The Last data From the IDC consultant they reveal that in the first quarter of the year, the first four world vacuum robots manufacturers come from China. All of them have ended up unseating the traditional market leader, Irobot, a company known for developing the Robot Roba Robots Family.

Chinese robots conquer the world. Chinese manufacturers who have broken the market are Beijing Roborock Technology (19.3%market share), Ecovacs Robotics (13.6%), Dreame Technology (11.3%) and Xiaomi (9.9%). Together those four companies managed to monopolize 54.1% of the total units distributed in that period, when the previous quarter that percentage had been 47.2%.

Source: IDC

Irobot sinks. Meanwhile, the Roomba falls significantly. A year ago they were in the first position in number of distributed units, but their current market share is only 9.3%, and their global sales have fallen 30.6% compared to the same period of 2024. Recall that Amazon was about to buy Irobot for 1.4 billion dollars, when the company today It is worth seven times less.

Source: IDC.

The aspiring robot are fashionable. Chinese firms have benefited in addition to a positive trend in this segment. At the global level they were distributed (not necessarily the same as “sold”) 5.09 million units in the first quarter, 11.9% more than in the same quarter of 2024.

And the commercial war, what? China benefited especially from a curious fact: its best client is none other than the United States, and it seems that commercial war and tariffs are not significantly affecting this market. As indicated In Nikkeiexport tariffs of this type of products have been reduced to 30, although both countries must continue to negotiate since this tariff truce has the expiration date on November 10.

In China the competition is fierce. Claire Zhao, an analyst at IDC, highlighted how these Chinese manufacturers face “fierce” competition in China, and there they barely manage to get benefits. New competitors also appear everywhere. DJI, known for his drones, has entered this segment with his family of Romo aspiring robots that adapt technologies of their air navigation systems. Meanwhile, Narkal Robotics, a Shenzhen startup, built 100 million dollars in April with investors such as Tencent. There were few …

Roborock, for all. The market leader, Roborock, indicated that he has achieved “a significant increase in income in our business abroad” thanks to the development of new sales channels and expansion to new markets. The company’s revenues in the first half of 2025 are 79% higher than those of the same period last year, and have reached 1,100 million dollars.

Ecovacs follows closely. Second is ecovacs, whose sales have grown by 86.5% in the second quarter with respect to the same period of 2024. Again the reason is in the Sales of your robots Outside China, in addition to the opening of new production lines to meet the growing demand that comes from the United States.

China does not stop innovating. Chinese manufacturers do not stop launching new models and innovations, such as vacuum robots with arms and pier. The new X11 ecovacs have a new mop and new elements to clean corners more effectively. The model, which in Shanghai costs $ 840, costs $ 1,500 in the US, a price clearly affected by the sarancels. Roborock is, like its competitors, insatiable in terms of innovationalready end of June had increased the template of its R&D division by 73.5% compared to the previous year: it has 1,364 employees thinking how to improve its devices.

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