Different fates of the hot products at CES: Smart glasses have become a big hit, while companion robots are ignored.
As the global consumer electronics industry's vane, every year at CES, we can see the industry's "expectations" for the coming year. For example, at CES 2025, which ended earlier this year, the reporting team of Lei Technology found that almost the entire industry was focusing on AI smart glasses and AI companion robots. At that time, Lei Technology also provided relevant interpretations of these two categories. In a blink of an eye, more than half a year has passed, and the two categories that were highly regarded at that time are now showing completely different market development trends.
Image source: Lei Technology
With the debut of Xiaomi's AI smart glasses, the smart glasses category and the head - mounted AR devices it represents have witnessed significant development in China. Established players such as Rokid, Thunderbird, Xingji Meizu, and xreal are constantly innovating and refreshing their product capabilities; new forces like Xiaomi are closely following, building their brand recognition with rich ecological applications. Except for the FlashPower Selfie Glasses, which "failed halfway through the venture", almost everyone can find their own niche in the smart glasses market.
However, Lei Technology has found that the situation of AI companion robots half a year later is relatively more complicated.
The "Disappeared" AI Companion Robots
Compared with smart glasses, the popularity of AI companion robots has cooled down very rapidly. At CES 2025 earlier this year, from well - known brands like TCL to lesser - known ones like Looi, many brands exhibited companion robots of various sizes and forms, trying to seize the opportunity in this new trend.
It should be noted that the companion robots discussed here are not functional robots like sweepers and lawn mowers, which focus on "completing tasks". Instead, they are emotional robots that emphasize interaction with people and provide emotional comfort: they don't sweep the floor or carry goods but try to fill the emotional gap in people's lives and provide users with "emotional value" through expressions, conversations, etc.
Image source: Lei Technology
Currently, Ropet, which made its debut at CES 2025, can be regarded as a "leader" in the field of emotional companion robots. Simply put, Ropet is an AI companion that sits on the desk and cannot move autonomously. Its main function is to chat with users and "amuse" them with expressions. Ropet even has a heating function, providing a better tactile experience when users "stroke its fur". However, judging from the market response, even a leading brand like Ropet, which has achieved good results in the North American and Japanese markets, has not effectively opened up the domestic market.
As for AI companion robots from other brands, they can even be described as having disappeared.
In Lei Technology's view, this "disappearance" is not an accident. On the one hand, the hardware form of AI companion robots is complex, integrating multiple sensors and modules such as motion, visual recognition, and voice interaction. The cost is much higher than existing products like smart speakers. In scenarios that also focus on voice and dialogue interaction, users tend to use lower - priced and more integrated AI mobile phone assistants or smart speakers to meet their basic needs.
Image source: Xiaomi
On the other hand, the biggest selling point of AI companion robots is "emotional value", but this is also the most difficult function to scale up and the most likely to cause controversy. Even though the industry has upgraded from smart speakers to companion robots, the latter's "anthropomorphic interaction" is still in its infancy. They are often just content - playing devices with mimetic expressions and sounds, and it is difficult to build a real emotional relationship chain. For most consumers, the motivation to pay thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan for such robots is quite limited.
Why is "Emotional Value" No Longer Popular?
To be more precise, the fundamental reason for the cold reception of emotional companion robots is that emotional value has not yet become a consumer category widely recognized by society.
Most of the past popular consumer electronics products were based on two types of logics: either solving efficiency problems, such as the supplementary role of smart watches in health monitoring and the value of sweepers in liberating hands; or meeting "quantifiable" living needs, such as clearer photos, larger screens, and longer battery life. However, companion robots use "loneliness" as a selling point, which seems rather awkward in the context of mass consumption.
Image source: Lei Technology
Especially in the Chinese market, this kind of consumption behavior of "paying for emotions" is still regarded as a symbol of "impulse consumption" and "consumerism" and has not truly become mainstream. It may even trigger social aversion. Users are willing to use Kimi to relieve stress and practice oral English because AI services like Kimi solve "quantifiable" problems. However, when physical hardware with "emotional support" as a selling point appears on the desk, consumers often become extremely resistant.
Emotional companion robots are neither as "dispensable" as toys nor as clearly positioned as white goods. This in - between positioning directly leads to a contradictory state among potential users of companion robots, who are "interested but afraid to buy" or "buy but rarely use".
Image source: Lei Technology
In fact, these are far from providing emotional support. In Lei Technology's view, a device with real emotional projection ability needs to learn the user's behavior and preferences over a long period and be able to actively provide understanding and comfort at critical moments - and this is far beyond the value that current smart hardware, which mainly focuses on "one - time sales", can provide.
After all, emotional companionship is essentially a "long - term service", but the current product logic is still that of "smart hardware". Most companion robots are sold in a one - time sales model, without a content subscription mechanism or the ability to continuously train and update. Once the hardware capabilities become outdated and the models are no longer updated, these "smart companion hardware" will soon be forgotten by users, and their usage frequency may even be lower than that of the mobile phone's AI assistant.
From this perspective, companion robots seem to have chosen the wrong path "from the very beginning".
Companion Robots Must Learn to Be "Active"
Of course, from an industry perspective, when I say that companion robots "chose the wrong path from the beginning", I'm not denying their significance. However, before brands rush into the market, I hope they can truly understand the real meaning of "emotional companionship" in today's individualized society, rather than simply launching a "talking ornament" and calling it quits.
In Lei Technology's view, if brands want to truly make efforts in the "AI companionship" track and create products that truly attract users, they must accelerate the transformation of companion robots from passive to active.
Most companion robots on the market still require users to initiate commands actively. The only difference is that the "wake - up words" have changed from "Xiaomi AI" or "Hey Siri" to "Hello", "I'm so bored", or "Talk to me". However, real emotional companionship should involve the machine actively sensing whether you are in an abnormal emotional state or have been silent for too long and deciding when to start an interaction. Behind this active emotional support lies the support of sensing hardware such as microphones and cameras, as well as algorithms such as emotion recognition, semantic analysis, and situational emotion perception.
Judging by this standard, products that truly have the opportunity to achieve success in the field of smart companionship should at least be able to "be readily available and appear actively". Even just nodding when the user is changing shoes before going out or reminding the user to rest early when working overtime late are ways to actively establish emotional interaction with the user. Or, to put it more directly, an excellent smart companion product must "actively do the right thing in the right situation", rather than simply being a "responsive" smart speaker.
From a psychological perspective, emotional companionship is not a false proposition. As social beings, people's need for emotional value will always exist. However, if products for interest companionship still remain at the level of "hardware" rather than services, these products are destined not to go far.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Lei Technology" and is published by 36Kr with permission.