Intuitive surgical has radically changed the game in soft tissue surgical robotics. It is having wide sweeping impacts across the industry. Well actually - it has had wide sweeping impacts across the industry. It has left many strategic companies with a major headache. Risks to their business - and potentially existential threats to some of their divisions.
This applies to suppliers of endo mechanical products, from Medtronic to JNJ to Applied to Meril to a host of stapler manufacturers and trocar manufactures.
This applies to the well know “Tower” imaging companies like Stryker to Olympus to Storz to Arthrex. And not just for their tower business but also to their smart OR business.
The Intuitive train is gaining speed, especially in the markets these strategics really really care about - USA, Europe, China, Japan, Brazil (and more). They are converting to da Vinci at a relentless space and eating up legacy businesses.
Some of the companies have already reacted - Medtronic with HUGO, Storz with Asensus. But it is still to be seen if these are the right defensive moves.
Others are piling in behind with JNJ and Ottava in an arms race (pun intended) to try and slow the conversion and take a piece of this lucrative pie.
If this onslaught is not stopped in the primary markets (please for now forget the hundreds of small markets - that’s not where companies will survive) then some strategics may lose entire divisions - and for some companies it really will be their demise.
To that end I’ve put down the 5 choices, that I think, the strategics are now faced with. You’re going to really like the last one: