“iRobot in 2019

Read Case , “iRobot in 2019: Can the Company Keep the Magic?” and watch the following three videos.

Case Study: For many company CEO’s, having the largest market share in a rapidly growing industry, controlling over 75 percent of global revenue, and experiencing record growth and sales in the latest fiscal year, would be a calming situation. However, Colin Angle, Chairman and CEO of iRobot, in its first year as a consumer-focused company, reported a 33.8 percent increase in revenue and a 21.5 percent increase in net profit over the prior year. The company announced expectations for about 20 percent revenue growth in 2018, which would push revenue over $1 billion. The company’s stock reached $68.00 on March 23, 2018, which was a 151 percent increase over the same date in 2017. However, for the management team at iRobot, those metrics only served to help fine-tune and develop strategy to improve the company’s performance and defend against several looming competitive threats. The company’s focus was the design and manufacture of robots that empowered people to do more both inside and outside of the home. The iRobot consumer robots helped people find smarter ways to clean and accomplish more in their daily lives. iRobot’s portfolio of robotic solutions featured proprietary technologies for the connected home and advanced concepts in cleaning, mapping and navigation, human-robot interaction, and physical solutions that moved the company beyond simple robotic vacuums. The company had announced a relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) that was believed to enable iRobot to address significant opportunities within the consumer business and the connected home. The AWS Cloud would allow devices to interact easily and securely and enable iRobot to scale the number of connected robots it supported globally and allow for increased capabilities in the smart home. Although iRobot’s recent past had been magical, the company faced significant headwinds. Global penetration of robotic vacuums was about 10 percent, and iRobot had about 60 percent market share, but several serious competitors had emerged, and in many cases, offered similar products at much lower prices. iRobot had divested its military and industrial robots and had become a consumer company with one-product—robotic cleaners. Also, customer privacy issues and the threat of data leaks from the company’s robots’ cameras and mapping feature had caused negative publicity. The company’s CEO had ignited a furor when he announced that iRobot “could” reach an agreement to share data with Apple, Amazon, or Alphabet. The iRobot management team had an incredible track record on which to build—the task moving into the second half of 2018 was to avoid or overcome the external competitive threats, and leverage prior achievements into future successes that would keep iRobot number one in its industry.

Write a  paper answering the questions below. The page count does not include the cover page, reference page, any charts, graphs, etc.

At least 3 references of an academic or scholarly source are required for this case study to support your analyses and conclusions.

Use APA 7th Edition writing style for your entire paper. Include narrative or parenthetical citations in the body of your paper and a reference page. Remember, all information that is not your own work or that is not common knowledge must be cited.

Case Study Questions

Please Include Abstract

1.What are iRobot’s competitive and resource strengths, and what opportunities do you identify? What notable weaknesses and threats are facing the company? Assess the combined impact of these forces on iRobot’s future profitability.

2.iRobot has the largest market share in a growing market, but does the company have a competitive advantage? A sustainable advantage? What additional strategies could the company adopt to secure or sustain competitive advantage?

3.Which of iRobot’s competitors presents that greatest competitive threat? Why? Support your answer.

4.From the provided financial data, what is iRobot’s financial condition? What do the financial statements suggest about the company’s future? If present trends continue, where do you see iRobot in the next few years?

5.What advice would you offer to CEO Angle to improve iRobot’s market position and profitability. Support your decision.