Has it already started?
What is it?
The future is extremely clear to me. Soft tissue surgical robotics has one super dominant player - Intuitive surgical. Coming a long long way behind them, to defend their laparoscopic business, which is diminishing as procedures move from open and straight stick lap to robotic, are Medtronic with their Hugo RAS, and Johnson & Johnson with the soon to be IDE submission for Ottava.
Then beyond that are a host of stand alone smaller companies with varying formats. This rag tag bunch of startups and small companies are bidding for an independent run at the soft tissue robotics market. But - in my opinion (and I’ve been there) they cannot go alone. The capital required, the mass of support infrastructure is just too much to take on the might of Intuitive.
Why not?
It’s hard for me to summarise why it is almost impossible for a small stand alone to survive - but let me try and help here.