China robotics-related expenditure to more than double by 2020

IDC Asia/Pacific reports that China spending on robotics and related services will more than double, growing from US$24.6 billion in 2016 to US$59.4 billion in 2020.

"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, Worldwide Robotics and Asia Pacific Manufacturing Insights, IDC Asia/Pacific. "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% of the worldwide robotics spending in 2020. Manufacturing continues to dominate China spending in robotics, with discrete and process manufacturing accounting for over 50% of spending in 2016.

From a technology perspective, Chinese spending on robotic systems, which includes industrial, service and consumer robots and after-market robotic hardware, is expected to hit US$29 billion in 2020. Services-related spending, which encompasses application management, education and training, hardware deployment, system integration, and consulting, will grow to over US$15.8 billion in 2020.

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