Ugobe And Pleo Trying Not To Go Extinct, May Release New Product This Year
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Wednesday, 4 of February , 2009 at 2:05 am
According to an article over at Wired, there’s some mixed news coming from Ugobe, makers of our favorite robot dinosaur. Unsurprisingly, Ugobe has been suffering due to the recent economic downturn recession, and they’re having trouble maintaining solid sales of their unquestionably adorable and unquestionably spendy robotic baby dino. About 100,000 Pleos have been sold, 60% in Europe and 30% in Asia and only 10% in the US… This sounds like a lot, but Ugobe has been forced to close its California offices and trim its workforce amidst a bunch of upper management resignations, and now is not the greatest time to be looking for new funding.
But all is far from lost, according to Ugobe president and COO Doug Swanson:
Ugobe still has a few robotic rabbits that it can pull out of its hat, says Swanson. The company is working on a pipeline of new products, including an update to the Pleo later this year. And the company has begun “very definite engineering moves” for a product that will come out in 2009, Swanson says.
“Not only are we alive but we are busy,” says Swanson.
I myself am not a Pleo owner. It’s an extremely innovative, responsive, and cute little robot… But it’s several hundred dollars, which is an amount of money that I can (and did) spend instead on a robot that vacuums for me. Pleo, for all its charms, doesn’t (to be blunt) do anything. And it’s not supposed to, it’s great at what it is. But at the moment, it’s kinda hard to justify paying what it costs for what it is. That said… If it helps keep Ugobe innovating and releasing new products, I might just have to buy one. I’m sure I won’t regret it.
Pleo is currently available at Amazon.com for $280.
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