The physical economy never consolidated into one universal equipment company.
It produced 100 public OEM / equipment platforms worth over $10B
Just look across Auto, Trucks, Construction, Ag, Factory automation, HVAC., Medical devices, Defense and more.
I deeply believe this is the better analogy for the way robotics will play out.
The physical world fragments by task, workflow, buyer, channel, safety regime, and labor substitute.
If you believe this than robotics probably looks something like:
A few horizontal platforms.
Dozens of vertical winners.
100 niche specialists.
A long tail of components, tooling, integrators, and robotic services businesses.