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China Leads the Growth of Global Robotics Adoption

Across the globe, the development and practical application of robotic technology has gained momentum during the last decade. While it's true that automation is typically applied to lower costs and improve productivity, new and emerging use cases will drive demand.

Investment in robotic systems and related services will more than double in China, growing from $24.6 billion in 2016 to $59.4 billion in 2020, according to the latest market study by International Data Corporation (IDC).

Robotic Systems Market Developement

"China continues to lead the growth of worldwide robotics adoption, primarily driven by strong spending growth in process manufacturing and cross-industry applications," says Dr. Jing Bing Zhang, research director at IDC. "In China, we are also seeing an accelerated growth in the adoption of commercial service robots especially for automated material handling in factories, warehouses and logistics facilities.


China is the single largest and the fastest growing robotics market in the world, and will account for more than 30 percent of the worldwide robotics spending in 2020.

According to the IDC assessment, manufacturing continues to dominate China's investment in robotics, with discrete and process manufacturing accounting for over 50 percent of spending in 2016.

From a technology perspective, China spending on robotic systems -- which includes industrial, service and consumer robots and after-market robotic hardware -- is expected to reach $29 billion in 2020.

Services-related spending, which encompasses application management, education and training, hardware deployment, system integration, and consulting, will grow to over $15.8 billion in 2020.

Robotics Market Research Resource

The IDC Worldwide Commercial Robotics Spending Guide quantifies the robotics opportunity from a region, industry, use case, and technology perspective.

Spending data is available for more than 52 use cases across 13 key industries in eight regions. Data is also available for a wide range of robotics hardware, software, and services categories. The detailed segmentation and timely, global data is designed to help vendors targeting the market to identify opportunities and execute an effective strategy.

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