According to foreign media reports, industry sources said that a planning team of Samsung Electronics’ Device Experience department has begun to develop a strategy to enter the robot market.

Samsung Electronics’ operating profit fell 95 percent year-on-year to 668.5 billion won in the second quarter due to the sluggish semiconductor industry and sluggish consumer electronics terminal market. Market insiders predict that the success of the humanoid robot business will have a significant impact on Samsung Electronics’ performance in the future, or will become an important engine for the company’s future performance growth.

Samsung humanoid robot strategy exposed

Following Tesla, Google and Microsoft, Samsung Electronics has also set its sights on the development of humanoid robots. According to foreign media reports, the company has begun comprehensive research on how to develop humanoid robots that walk on two feet like humans.

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Analysts say Samsung’s move is aimed at the AI-powered humanoid robot market, to which it has also delayed the launch of wearable robots for healthcare. Initially, Samsung Electronics planned to launch Botfit, its first commercially available wearable robot, in the second half of last year. At the time, Samsung Electronics produced a prototype, but the company repeatedly delayed the official release date in order to improve the quality of the product.

Due to the commercialization of AI humanoid robots, Samsung Electronics has decided to revise its medium – and long-term strategy. At first, Samsung only attempted to develop a robot that provides simple services or has walking assistance functions. Compared with ordinary robots, humanoid robots have a broader application scenario, and as more and more companies integrate AI technology into humanoid robots, “embodied intelligence” is favored by all parties, and Samsung has decided to participate in this wave.

Earlier this year, Samsung invested 59 billion won, or about 319 million yuan, in Rainbow Robotics, a local robot manufacturer. As the first listed local robot company invested by tech giant Samsung Electronics, Rainbow Robotics was founded in 2011 by researchers at the Humanoid Robotics Center of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and owns the world’s first commercial bipedal walking robot “HUBO2.” As of the third quarter of last year, the company’s cumulative sales of 10.4 billion yuan.

Samsung Electronics regards robotics as a future growth project, and Chairman Lee Jae-yong announced a three-year investment plan in August 2021, announcing that 240 trillion won will be invested in future new projects such as robotics and artificial intelligence, and the group has continued to increase investment in this field. At the end of the same year, Samsung Electronics’ robot business group was upgraded to the robot business group. At last year’s shareholders meeting, Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Han Jong-hee stressed that the first step in exploring new projects will be robots, which will become a new area of opportunity to connect with customers.