stores

From today you can pay with Bizum in stores, this is how it works

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Let’s tell you How Bizum payments work in stores physical. This is the long-awaited function with which the Spanish application begins to compete with the American Visa, Mastercard, Apple or Google to take over our mobile payments. The deployment of this function will be progressiveand it will be each banking entity that will decide when to implement it. So, the technology already works as of now, but since Bizum is implemented directly in your bank’s app, it will be up to you when to add the touch payments feature. How this feature works This new function is used to pay with Bizum at the establishments’ dataphones. Businesses will not have to change their POS terminals, since the financial institutions themselves will be the ones to enable this new function in the terminals they already have. All this so that the implementation of this function is quick and easy. Currently, when you pay with your mobile phone in a store, you open your wallet application, choose the card and bring your mobile phone closer to the POS. The NFC chip in your mobile phone and the dataphone establishes the link between them and that’s it, you’ve paid. Now, You can do this from your bank’s app without having to configure the mobile wallet app. In addition to this, An app called Bizum Pay is also going to start arrivingwhich will be like a Bizum wallet application with which to make the payment easier, just as if you did it with Google Pay or Apple Pay, and without having to enter your bank app. The Bizum system will have the same security guarantees as the rest of the mobile payment options. You’ll have to unlock your device to pay, so it’s safer than paying with a card that others can use. Bizum currently has 39 participating banking entitiesamong them the most important banks in Spain, but also many neobanks. Therefore, if you are going to pay for your mobile phone, you can do so with this Spanish alternative instead of resorting to the American ones. The way it works will be exactly the same. When can you pay with Bizum in a business When your bank wants. This is the quick answer. From now on, it will be up to each bank to implement this technology in their mobile applications for customers and in the POS terminals of businesses. Each bank will have its own rhythm, that is, it will arrive progressively. In any case, you will have to pay attention to notifications from your bank’s appthe one you already use to send money with Bizum, because that will be when you will be told when you can start using this. In Xataka Basics | Bizum in 2026: everything that changes (and what does not) in transfers with this system

has ended with closed stores, fights and tear gas

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In 2026 it is no longer strange see long lines of people who spend the night outside the stores of a certain brand waiting for the launch of one of their products. What is not so common is to see them at the doors of a youth watch store to a watch that costs 400 euros. Triple that of the average of their watches. The launch that occurred this weekend was not just any launch, what all that people who were waiting patiently at the doors of the shops I longed for the Swatch Royal Popa watch that emerged from the alliance between Swatch and Audemars Piguet, a Swiss firm whose royal oak from which this model is inspired, starts at 20,000 euros. Such a fuss has been made to achieve this, that even the police have had to use tear gas in some stores. Luxury watchmaking for generation Z Swatch has been partnering with luxury Swiss watch brands for years to bring haute horlogerie to a generation Z more familiar with smartwatches than with traditional mechanical watches. From there collaborations such as the MoonSwatch with Omega in 2022, with Blancpain and now with the prestigious Swiss manufacturer Audemars Piguet. According to published the medium of fashion and trends #Legendthe MoonSwatch series created by Omega for Swatch sold more than one million units in its first year and generated around $275 million in revenue. Given such success, the Swiss brand wanted to replicate the recipe with the Royal Pop by Audemars Piguetand get a “luxury” watch adapted to the taste of generation Z. The Royal Pop transfers that haute horlogerie aesthetic to eight pocket models with Swatch’s characteristic colors, at a price between 385 and 400 euros. A seemingly simple and affordable proposal to wear a luxury piece on your wrist that, however, has exceeded the capacity of Swatch stores from all over the world, to the point that the brand had to make a call for calm from their social networks. MoonSwatch with developed by Swatch and Omega Going for a 400 euro watch that already costs 2,500 on Wallapop The collection was put on sale with a restriction of one watch per person per day. That limitation, far from slowing down demand, triggered it. In Barcelona, ​​hundreds of people had been camping for days in front of the store and the Mossos d’Esquadra they had to intervene and order the closure of the premises. In Paris, the police used tear gas to control about 300 people, and in Milan there were fights between clients and security. The local press from Seville said that long queues also formed in the center of the city. According what was published by The Wall Street Journal, Most stores sold out in a matter of minutes and Swatch preemptively closed stores in the United Kingdom, the United States and Europe. A few hours after the launch, Royal Pop was already appeared on Wallapop for a resale price of between 600 and 2,500 euros, and on eBay some pieces were ordered for 17,000 euros. The dynamics of this second hand massive sale has been identical to that of the launches of limited edition sneakers or other exclusive products: buyers with knowledge of the market grabbed the first places in the queue days before their launch and bought and resold immediately, taking advantage of the shortage in the first units. According to collected Reason Whysome of those who were legitimately interested in the watch complained about the way in which Swatch had organized the launch: “What happened in the stores in Madrid is a shame. Zero security control, mafias sneaking people by the dozens into the first positions and zero concern for those truly interested in the watch and not in resale. It’s time to sell the collection and never touch a Swatch again,” declared one of the people waiting in line at a store in the capital. A success as a product, a failure as a brand The Royal Pop chaos is a case of success and failure at the same time. If you look up the definition of “dying successful” in a dictionary, a Swatch logo will appear. The collection created together with Audemars Piguet has been a resounding success and shows that Swatch’s recipe to try to attract generation Z to the world of luxury watchmaking is the right one. As and as they point out in Marketing InteractiveWith this strategy, both brands win because Swatch ensures large sales in the present, while Audemars Piguet positions itself as an aspirational brand for a new generation of potential. buyers in the future. The problem is that the management at the Swatch points of sale has been a disaster lacking any foresight, to the point of requiring the intervention of the police to avoid greater evils. This lack of foresight in such a strategic launch makes the customer feel reluctant to participate in the next campaign because they do not want to have to spend days camped in front of the store to get their unit, even more so when the product is targeted to an audience who, in the near future, aspires to wear an Omega, Audemars Piguet or Blancpain watch on his wrist. In Xataka | Some OT contestants did not know how to read a clock hands. Science has clues as to why it is becoming more common Image | Swatch

Speculation with Pokémon cards is such a serious problem that some stores already give knowledge tests to their customers

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In 2024, global sales of ‘Pokémon’ collectible card game They reached 2.2 billion dollars, with a growth of 25% compared to the previous year. The Pokémon Company increased production up to 10.2 billion letters by 2025. During the pandemic, Logan Paul and other content creators began opening envelopes on videos that reached millions of views. Since then, the fever has not stopped growing, and stores are beginning to propose unusual tests to distinguish genuine buyers from resellers. This is a test. At the west branch of Ikebukuro, in Tokyo, the specialty store Bic Camera made a decision that would separate the buyers of ‘Pokémon’ trading cards from the scalpers: to buy packs of the latest expansion, Ninja Spinner, you must first beat a written questionnaire of 15 questions about the ‘Pokémon’ universe without a cell phone, without help and in Japanese. It’s just the beginning. The questionnaire is not the only requirement. Shoppers must have an active loyalty account in the chain, either via app or physical card, allowing staff to spot suspiciously frequent purchases. Additionally, the store applies a limit of one box per customer and removes the seal and outer packaging upon delivery: an opened product loses much of its value on the secondary market, where resellers need the seal intact to inflate prices. According to X user Ryo Saeba, the system is working: Several resellers failed the test and left without product, since due to the random nature of the questionnaire it cannot be prepared in advance. It is a problem that, however, does not have an easy solution even from The Pokémon Company: if more copies of the most in-demand cards are printed, speculation would be reduced, but competitive play would be affected, as would the feeling of exclusivity of finding a rare card in a pack. Why Ninja Spinner. The Ninja Spinner expansion is the Japanese version of the western Chaos Rising, scheduled for release on May 22, and which features Mega Greninja ex as the main card. The former Mega Greninja gold card was worth $593 in March and It is now quoted in thousands.. An envelope that costs around 5 euros in the store can be resold for 40 in a matter of hours. The bad yen. Additionally, there is an additional economic factor that makes the reseller problem more serious: the structural weakness of the yen, combined with the relatively affordable price of the boxes, has made Pokémon cards a common target of foreign buyers and international resellers. Japan-exclusive releases, which include illustrations and finishes not available in other markets, multiply the appeal. Sometimes new items last minutes on shelves before ending up on resale platforms. How they do it. Professional resellers have tactics to circumvent the control systems that stores establish to give preference to real buyers: they hire several people to wait in line simultaneously, use multiple payment cards and create fake accounts to access online reservations. In October 2025Japanese police arrested two Vietnamese citizens who had created thirty fictitious accounts using fraudulently obtained SIM cards to participate in purchase raffles and obtain dozens of boxes that summer. Other initiatives. Other Bic Camera branches have adopted measures such as requiring a driver’s license or Japanese tax identification document, which limits purchases to residents. Official Pokémon Center stores also maintain strict unit limits per customer to preserve prices close to the official one. Outside Japan there has also been a lukewarm response to the activity of the scalpersname as resellers are known in the sector: Walmart, for example, introduced a limit of five packs per purchase at the end of 2024 after a video with 12 million views on TikTok showed a scalper emptying a store’s entire display in one trip. Header | Pexels In Xataka | In 2016, millions of people went out to hunt Pokémon on the streets. In 2026 there will be autonomous robots guided by this

In November, Spain is supposed to force stores to charge an amount for each bottle and can sold. It is supposed

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Something ticks inside every yellow recycling bin and the noise perfectly reaches newsrooms across the country. Hence the articles, pieces and reports that They say that “starting in November the stores will charge” for each plastic bottle. The good news is that yes, the law says that. The bad news is that where the ticking does not reach is the power centers of Madrid capital. What’s happening? Indeed, the Waste Law of 2022 obliges Spain to have a Deposit, Return and Return System (SDDR) for plastic bottles, cans and beverage bricks operational as of November 22, 2026. And the reason is simple: the country had to recycle 70% of everything introduced into the market by 2023 and we did not achieve it. Faced with this possibility, the legislator was clear: the current system had to be abandoned and the packaging return system adopted (the one that charges a deposit for each container and returns it later). Portugal found itself in a similar situation and just introduced the European system. So? What is the problem? The truth is that we have no shortage of problems. To begin with, measuring how we really recycle. For years, stakeholders claimed that recycling rates were close to 80%; However, in 2024, the General Subdirectorate of Waste prepared a report relating to the calculation of the separate collection of SUP bottles for beverages that lowered that figure to 41.3% (well below the 70% required). The second problem is regulation. Following the Law, in May 2025, four organizations (Ecoembes, AECOC, Procircular and CorePET) They asked the Community of Madrid that authorized them as Collective Systems of Extended Producer Responsibility in charge of managing the SDDR. The Community is the competent one since the organizations have their headquarters there. And then? Then nothing. Madrid legally had six months to resolve the request; but it granted itself an extension of another six months that would end next month. However, the Ministry of the Environment has already explained that they have no intention of doing anything because of the “legal uncertainty (that it entails), since adequate and sufficient regulations have not been developed at the state level.” MITECO, for its part, responds that there is no insecurity and that they are not going to do anything more. Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking. Nobody knows anything. While the CAM runs out of its extension, there are less than seven months left before we begin to break the Law and all scenarios are on the table: from a quick solution to a blockade that delayed everything two or three more years (most likely). What is out of the question is that there is no political will to implement this and nothing suggests that this will change. If you had to bet and taking into account that Spain is the country with the most cases of infractions for not transposing community regulationsit would be surprising if the SDDR started in November of this year. Image | James Lo In Xataka | Europe decided to regulate how garbage should be disposed of. We will pay it with a new mandatory rate in 2025

The molecule that stores the sun for years and releases heat just when you need it

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In winter, raising the blinds to take advantage of the light and heat of the sun in the central hours of the day is a good idea to heat the house while saving on heating. Of course, as the afternoon passes and night falls, goodbye to the sun and its heat. From an energy point of view, it would be fantastic to be able to store the sun in a bottle to release its heat when needed. Something like this has occurred to a research team from the University of California in Santa Barbara, which has published its research in Science: a molecule that captures sunlight, stores it for years without loss, and releases it on demand. No plugs or batteries. Professor Grace Han’s group has synthesized a modified organic molecule inspired by DNA. It is called pyrimidone and is capable of capturing solar energy, storing it in chemical bonds and releasing it as heat in a controlled and reversible manner. In short, as if it were a battery. Context. The analogy of the bottled sun is for practical purposes one of the great problems of solar energy: the issue is not so much capturing it, but rather storing it because obviously there is not always enough sun to satisfy demand. And conventional batteries degrade, are heavy, carry inherent management risks, and are expensive (although now they are below minimums). What Han’s team is proposing is not new: molecular thermal storage, known as “MOST” for short, has been researched for years. However, until now no system had managed to combine competitive energy densities with release temperatures sufficient for real practical application. Why is it important. Because this research breaks two essential barriers that make MOST increasingly closer to being a reality: It has an energy density of more than 1.6 megajoules per kilogram, almost double the energy density of a standard lithium-ion battery. It releases enough heat to be able to boil water under ambient conditions. It is also soluble in water, which makes it potentially compatible with circulation systems in solar collectors. These properties open the door to uses such as domestic heating and domestic hot water (DHW), areas without an electrical grid or systems integrated into roofs. How it works. It is important to highlight that despite the analogies with solar energy, its mechanism is completely different from that of photovoltaic cells. Come on, it does not convert light into electricity, but rather it transforms it into chemical energy that it stores in its chemical bonds. The molecule, which was designed with computational modeling thinking about reducing it as much as possible, works as if it were a spring: upon absorbing ultraviolet light it undergoes a reversible change in its shape, passing into a high-energy state. The molecule can remain stable in that state for years until an external stimulus causes it to relax, releasing the accumulated heat. As Han Nguyen detailslead author of the article, “the concept is reusable and recyclable.” From Barcelona to California. The fact that the MOST have been in the laboratory for a long time is so true that in 2024 a team from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia published a paper in Joule on a hybrid device that integrated a MOST system directly into a silicon photovoltaic cell. The idea is that organic molecules (composed of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, fluorine and nitrogen) act on the one hand by storing energy and on the other, as an optical filter and cooling agent for the solar cell. The molecules absorb the UV photons that silicon does not use well, cool the cell and store that surplus as chemical energy. Thus, the solar cell generates more electricity and nothing is wasted: the system achieved a solar utilization efficiency of 14.9% and a record of 2.3% in MOST storage. Yes, but. That two independent studies separated in time work on the MOST shows that this technology is more than a mere laboratory concept: it is getting closer to having real applications. Of course, like any other innovation, it faces the challenge of scalability and costs, essential for eventual industrial deployment. In Xataka | Plastic solar panels have always been more of a dream than reality: China has just changed that In Xataka | Spain has just plugged in more batteries in one month than in three years: this is the plan to save our cheaper energy Cover | POT

Carrefour is going to open 750 stores in Spain in the next four years. But not as we know them

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Carrefour has announced 750 openings in Spain and not because business is going especially well. He has announced them because the model that made him great (the suburban hypermarket) has been losing steam for a while. This strategic plan until 2030 is, above all, an adaptation to the reality of the modern consumer. The background. Carrefour was one of those who popularized a way of shopping that dominated the retail European for a time: the hypermarket. A huge area on the outskirts, with free parking and the idea of ​​having everything under one roof. Saturday shopping as a family ritual. That model worked while life revolved around cars and rigid schedules. But habits have been changing, and with them the business. The contrast. The 750 planned openings are not hypermarkets. They are mainly small-format, urban convenience stores (Carrefour Express), many operated by franchisees. The kind of place where you walk in on the way home, grab what’s missing, and in ten minutes you’re done. Not where you spend much more time filling a car. In Spain, the only format that grew in 2024 was precisely this: 62 new Express stores compared to zero net openings in hypermarkets and large supermarkets. Yes, but. Growing in convenience is easier to announce than to execute. The margin per square meter is lower, the competition is intense, from Dia to the regional chains; and the franchise model involves relying on third parties to maintain standards. Alexandre Bompard, CEO of Carrefour, has admitted that part of the growth will come through acquisitions, because the Spanish market “is fragmented.” In other words: you have to buy to gain scale, and that costs money and time. Meanwhile, Lidl, with almost a 7% share, threatens to take second position from Carrefour in the Spanish market, where the French group has lost 0.7 points in a year and stands at 9%. Very far in any case from Mercadona. The big question. What is done with the 206 hypermarkets that Carrefour has in Spain? The plan talks about converting up to 10% of its surface towards growth categories, such as pets, personal care or financial services. It is a reasonable solution, but it patches the format more than transforms it. Carrefour’s real bet is to build a parallel business to the hypermarket, smaller and more urban, that grows while the large one stabilizes. If you succeed, you will have read the moment correctly. If not, you will have spent a lot of money chasing rivals who already have an advantage. In Xataka | Mercadona has a rival in its absolute dominance of supermarkets: the “ultra low-cost” of PrimaPrix and Sqrups Featured image | Carrefour

Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores seemed like the future of commerce. Now they all close

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Amazon has announced the definitive closure of its 57 Amazon Fresh stores and its 15 Amazon Go establishmentsending a decade of experiments to reinvent physical shopping. Fresh They were classic supermarkets, but with technological touches. Go They were stores without cashiers where you entered, took products and left: sensors and cameras charged you automatically. The only staff was the replacement staff. Why is it important. This is Amazon’s most visible failure in its attempt to move its e-commerce dominance to the physical world. A company that has made a success of selling everything online has not been able to sell basic products in physical stores while being profitable. The context. Go opened in 2018, Fresh in 2020. Both represented the futuristic vision of retail: cutting-edge technology, extreme automation and a clear obsession with eliminating friction. Amazon has admitted that it “has not created a distinctive customer experience with the right economic model.” An elegant way of saying that they have not found enough clients willing to pay the extra cost of all that innovation. Yes, but. Amazon is not abandoning the food sector. Now it’s going to convert some locations into Whole Foods, the chain he bought in 2017. Whole Foods has more than 550 stores, has grown 40% in sales and will open one hundred new stores. In addition, Amazon is also already delivering food at home in 5,000 cities in the United States. Between the lines. These closures say a lot about the impressive technology that these stores had: not even it can compensate for a mediocre proposal. Amazon Go eliminated queues, but perhaps that did not solve much if its real competitors did not have a problem there. Of course, “Just Walk Out” technology now operates in 360 third-party stores and more than 40 Amazon fulfillment centers. As is often the case, innovation survives where it makes economic sense. The failure of Go and Fresh was seen coming for a long time. The pattern. History repeats itself. Amazon has closed physical bookstores, stores pop-up and now also these concepts. Each closing tells the same story: mastering online does not make you a good offline seller. Especially if you aim for profitability. Bezos built his empire by eliminating intermediaries and friction at Amazon, but the physical supermarket has friction for a few reasons: people want to touch the fruit, compare products, decide on the fly… Human behavior cannot always be improved by algorithmic efficiency. Go deeper. The failure contrasts with that of other technological giants that in one way or another have managed to dominate the retail. Apple dominates its stores because it sells an experience, not just its products. And Tesla controls its points of sale because the electric car requires a certain evangelization. Amazon tried to apply its e-commerce formula (full automation, speed, elimination of staff) to a business that simply has other dynamics. A supermarket is not a logistics warehouse. And not even an entire Amazon, with all its resources, can impose its vision of the future if the customer does not buy it. In Xataka | I have decided to become independent from all US technology and embrace European technology. This is how I’m getting it Featured image | Simon Bak

We have been relying on the Nutri-Score in stores for years. Science believes that its real impact is zero

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He Nutriscore what we can see in some foods born with an ambitious promise: simplify the nutritional complexity of products into a code of easy to understand colors to know if a food is healthy or not. However, what on paper seemed like the definitive solution against obesity and poor diet is facing a much grayer scientific reality. His dark side. Although the idea seemed quite good, the reality is that new scientific reviews are setting off alarm bells. The conclusion being drawn is quite clear: the real impact on the shopping basket is minimal and the algorithm categorizes foods that are essential as something very bad. A good gap. One of the strongest arguments in favor of Nutri-Score comes from studies conducted in controlled environments, i.e. a laboratory. But what happens when we go down to the real, everyday world? This is what they wanted to analyze in a recent narrative reviewwhich evaluates consumer behavior in physical supermarkets and throws cold water on the system. And with this food color coding, the data shows that the improvement in the nutritional score of the purchase is only 2.5%. That is to say, it has hardly been noticed that a person begins to eat much more appropriate foods with this color code. Something that quite disagrees with the laboratory results that predicted that the effect was going to be much better. The real victim. The fact that some people’s shopping baskets have improved a little is the motivation that some producers of these foods have to change their ingredients to achieve a better Nutri-Score. as seen on Eroski. But this does not mean that citizens have changed the way they shop. The great blind spot. The fiercest criticism from the scientific field, highlighted by organizations such as the Puleva Nutrition Instituteis the omission of micronutrients. The current algorithm focuses almost exclusively on macronutrients, which are fat, sugars and proteins, but forgets other points that are fundamental. One of these points are vitamins and minerals, which are logically essential for the body, especially because some of them must be taken as they are not produced by the body. But polyphenols or bioactive compounds also stand out, which are essential antioxidants that can prevent chronic diseases. Unfair penalty. The system that is implemented right now also penalizes foods for their total fat content without differentiating whether they are healthy, something that has led to putting a bad score for olive oil. A paradoxical situation. The study from the University of Granada wanted to see the same thing about soluble cocoa to highlight these large discrepancies that force us to question Nutri-score. The result of the research team indicates that while pure cocoas with a higher bioactive profile can receive low grades such as C or D. But, on the other hand, others ultra-processed products with additives They achieve better scores, even A, simply by adjusting their sugar or fiber levels, without necessarily being healthier. Trying to correct it. The scientific community is no stranger to this problem and logically when something goes wrong you want to fix it to make it fit reality and that it truly fulfills the objective with which it was created. In fact, recent updates have already tried to correct the algorithm to better treat vegetable oils and nuts and penalize ultra-processed foods more strongly. However, the validations insist that, although there is an association between scores and macronutrientsthere remain huge gaps with comprehensive dietary guidelines. And we must keep in mind that the Nutri-Score measures “isolated nutrients” but not the overall quality of the food. ¿Where are we going? Science seems to indicate that the Nutri-Score is a useful but overly simplistic tool. By trying to condense health into a letter, nuances are lost that really make a difference in longevity and disease prevention. Although the algorithm is being refined to better align with European recommendations, the risk of the consumer blindly trusting an “A” for a processed product versus a “C” for a natural food remains present. Images | Franki Chamaki In Xataka | Ozempic’s “great rebound”, in figures: science reveals that the weight returns four times faster than with a diet

IKEA has had to close seven large stores in China. It is the symptom of a much more important trend

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The real estate market was the great economic engine in China, but currently it is plunged into a deep crisis from which it does not seem that it will come out soon. Houses are not sold and, consequently, not as much furniture is sold either. If we add to this an increasingly strong online market and competitors with very aggressive prices, it is not surprising that IKEA is not doing very well. Seven fewer stores. IKEA China has announced which will close seven of its stores on February 2. These are seven large stores, known as ‘blue box’, located in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Tianjin, Nantong, Xuzhou, Ningbo and Zhejiang. After the closure, there will be 34 more operational stores in the country. Change of strategy. IKEA emphasizes that “we will move from large-scale expansion to focused development.” Its strategy is to move away from large stores and focus on local commerce. They plan to open ten small stores in the next two years, starting with the Dongguan store scheduled for next February. This strategy contrasts with the one they are following in other countries like the United Kingdom either USAwhere what they are closing are some small stores opened after the pandemic. Competence. As we said, the Chinese real estate crisis is one of the reasons why sales have fallen, but not the only one. The Swedish giant faces other difficulties, such as the emergence of new local competitors that offer Much lower prices and much faster deliveries. In this context, it makes sense that IKEA wants to focus on small stores and strengthen its online channel. In fact, recently They opened a store on JD.com. Online presence. In statements to South China Morning Posteconomist Fan Xinyu, attributes the closure to “a highly developed online sales market in China, a trend that has reduced the survival margin of physical points of sale.” It is estimated that in 2024 in China They delivered 5,400 packets per secondmaking it the largest online marketplace in the world. In this sense, we can say that in China it is more common to place an order online than to go to a large store such as IKEA. IKEA China. The Swedish company opened its doors in China in 1998 and went on to open 41 large stores. The company has not published financial data, but China continues to be among the ten markets where they sell the most. According to ReutersChina accounts for 3.5% of all IKEA global sales. Image | Wikipedia In Xataka | The founder of Ikea was one of the richest men on the planet, but his most famous trick is available to everyone

is putting them in front of stores

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There are those who are clear that, not soon, robots will be like current smartphones: we will all have one. There is not enough time for prices to become as democratized as to get to that pointbut if there is a country that has taken the lead when it comes to push humanoid roboticsthat’s China. And the Hobbs W1 is the latest example: a humanoid robot with a human face, and hands capable of doing fine motor work. And they have already put it to work. Hobbs W1. A far cry from Star Wars robots and closer to the uncanny valley. Hobbs W1 still looks like a robot, but the fact that they have given it a face and a body with an absurdly stylized female silhouette is a declaration of intent: they want us to feel “comfortable” with their presence. Very low on the evolutionary scale of robots are those tray holder (or Sardinator) with faces that look like emojis and cat ears: the Hobbs W1 has no legsbut it does have a face, upper joints and a screen. They are tools that are used to give instructions to people. Because Hobbs W1 is already working and those responsible, the Pekingese Noetix Roboticsthey point to a very clear segment: commercial spaces where you can guide clients, answer questions and perform reception tasks. great players. Noetix is ​​one of the many – many – Chinese startups that the country itself is promoting. The strategy of China is to become a robotics power (technological, in general, especially promoted by the ‘Delete A’ plan), and although there are many companies, we can now talk about very prominent names. Hobbs W1 It is estimated that Unitree, UBTECH and AgiBot they control practically the humanoid robot market in China. It is still a small market, but these three companies are looking to position themselves as soon as possible. Its key is the ability to manufacture at scale, but also specialization: Unitree may be the best known name. The most direct comparison would be with Boston Dynamics, since it has its ‘robodog’ – the Unitree Go2 – and its humanoid, the G1. Unitree is already selling units to end customers. In fact, you can buy that Go2 on Amazon. UBTECH has the Walker S1, a robot focused more on professional use. It is the one that directly seeks to replace humans on assembly lines and, in fact, it is already working in one of the plants Geely -manufacturer of electric cars-. AgiBot It is the third in contention. Instead of being specific, it has specialized in being multiplatform and going to volume so that they can do tasks in different sectors. It has humanoid robots from its X series, but also much more specialized ones from the A and G series (although they also give them faces to humanize them. Image: Unitree. Muscle and brain. These companies are closely linked to the development of another of China’s priorities, lto artificial intelligencebut there is a fourth that stands out for its focus. It’s Galbot, and he’s taken a less conventional route. Instead of focusing on promoting their robots as mountebanks or capable of lift heavy weights in factoriesGalbot has developed multimodal AI models with one thing very clear in mind: that they can now care for humans in the real world. When we talk about topics of this type, it is always difficult to know to what extent it is smoke, promises or there is someone with the controls behind the scenes. In the case of Galbot and his G1I can say that, although slow, it works. It already serves a store of just 10 m² in Beijing and you can order drinks perfectly. There is no human nearby and the company plans to expand with more than a hundred automated stores throughout the rest of Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. From the laboratory to the store. Therefore, the Hobbs W1 is just one more of those humanoid robots that China has already put to work. And the truth is that it contrasts with what we see in the West. We have been talking about robotics for many years, but the proper names were different. China has arrived later in this racebut it has managed to position itself as the country to beat. And the reason is your approach. While Tesla promises to have “many” Optimus and Boston Dynamics continues to show his Atlas performing jumpsChinese robots are already in stores, but also walking through the subway supplying the 7 Eleven either extinguishing fires with real firefighters. The vast majority of the startups that are starring in the conversation have been created in the last two years and make it clear that the country is very interested in leading the sector. It’s not only to show off. And it may not just be a strategy to demonstrate technological muscle. we come it counting for months: China faces a future with many more elderly and, as a consequence, much less labor. Have a tremendous rate of youth unemploymentbut even so in the medium term the country faces a dramatic demographic contraction. Putting the elderly to work It’s an option –also in Japan-, but at a certain moment, and with a low birth ratehaving only the elderly work is not an option. That’s where the country’s strategy comes into play: leading the conversation in roboticsattract talent and, in addition, develop robots that can fill that job hole that is anticipated in a few years. Stepping on the accelerator. In whatever way and for whatever reason, it is clear that both the country and the startups are in a hurry. HE they estimate 800 humanoid robots sold in 2024 compared to more than 4,000 in 2025. By 2045, the projection is that they will have more than 100 million operational units with a market of 1.4 billion dollars. And the main advantage is that economy of scale, the national push and being able to access key elements in the … Read more

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