Robots Replace Gardeners as Sales Surge for Auto-Mowers

Europes backyards have become the latest front in the robot wars.

With a quarter of lawn owners saying they dislike mowing the grass, sales of machines that will do the job for them are taking off, especially in Europe where landscaping services are more expensive than in the U.S.

That has spurred a legion of manufacturers to challenge market leader Husqvarna AB. (HUSQB) Robert Bosch GmbH, Deere & Co. (DE) and Global Garden Products Italy SpA this year started offering robotic mowers, which Husqvarna sells for as much as 5,000 euros ($6,487). Honda Motor Co. (7267) plans to enter the fray in 2013.

We felt we had to get on board, said Thomas Olsson, head of Swedish operations at privately owned Global Garden Products. For the first time you hear that people exchange relatively new manual mowers for robots.

The market for hands-free mowers, which expanded by more than 30 percent last year, offers a rare bright spot in Europes consumer climate. The European market may grow as much as 20 percent annually over the next five years, Olsson said. Most of the customers are in Sweden, Germany, France and Switzerland -- countries that have so far proven resilient to the debt crisis.

Demand for the garden robots has exploded the last couple of years, said Mats Gustafsson, owner of Moheda Jarnhandels AB, a hardware store in the southern Swedish town of Moheda. Gustafsson said hes sold almost 60 robomowers this year, compared with fewer than 10 five years ago.

Its still a niche market in Europe as a whole, but its growing so fast so that in some countries its now starting to be a mainstream segment, said Henric Andersson, head of product management and development at Husqvarna. With time, it may be as big or bigger than regular mowers in some countries.

Six percent of all mowers sold in Germany are now robotic, and the countrys automatic mower market is growing in double digits, according to research company GfK Retail and Technology GmbH.

Husqvarna, the former Electrolux AB unit that produced the first robotic mower in 1995, has six models that can care for lawns ranging from 400 square meters (4,306 square feet) to 6,000 square meters. Outside of Europe, it mainly sells the mowers in Australia and New Zealand.

The Swedish company brought the product to North America in 2001, only to retreat a year later after concluding the market wasnt ready. In addition to the greater use of landscaping services by U.S. homeowners, North American grass, especially in the southern U.S., is generally tougher than European varieties, making it difficult for the machines fine blades to work effectively, according to Husqvarna.

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Robots Replace Gardeners as Sales Surge for Auto-Mowers