World
Robotics, 2011
Summary
The paper is the executive
summary of World Robotics, showing the rend in the robotics market in the past
years, with attention to the last one. In
2010 robot sales doubled compared to 2009 to 118,337 units, the main drivers of
the strong recovery have been the electronics and automotive sector values for
2010 have got basically back to values pre-2009, which has been the worst year
for robotics, the lowest from 1994.
If we go in details and check the areas where there has
been a significative growth, then we will notice how Asia (including Australia
and New Zeland) has faced a growth of 132% arriving to about 70,000 units/year.
The markets featuring the greatest dynamism, encountering
a triple growth in the size of the market, have perhaps been China, Republic of
Korea and in general the ASEAN countries.
In 2010 Japan, after leading for many years, for the
first time fell down as the second largest robot market in the world, preceded
by the Republic of Korea; China instead appears in forth position with its
15,000 units/year, thanks to an increase in capacities and in an increasing
trend in towards automation.
In 2010 Italy, France, Spain, UK have all seen growth
between 40% and 60%; these countries are particularly relevant since they are
main countries for important automotive companies, a notable sector which faced
a decreasing number of robot installation during the greatest economic downturns
between 2006/07 and 2009.
The automotive industry has been the major market in the
robot field, 70% of the robots in 2010 were demanded in this kind of
application, it was followed by the electrical/electronic industry with a share
of total supply of 26%. Surprisingly rubber and plastic industry, after years
of increasing market share, has seen a reduction in its supplies.
Since the end of the 60s, when the first industrial
robots were introduced, the cumulated sales of robots has been of 2,142,000
units up to the end of 2010. On the assumption that the service life of a
robot is in average between 12 years (according to the World Robotics Executive
Summary 2011) and 15 Years (according to a UNECE/IFR pilot study), we might say
that at the end of year 2010 the world wide stock of operational robots was in
the range of 1,035,000 and 1,300,000 units.
In 2010 sales recovered by 50% compared with 2009, it
reached a value up to 5.7 billion $, still below 2008, one of the most
successful years ever. In year 2010 the values of the market (without counting peripherals,
such as $, software and system engineering) was estimated as 5.7 billion, the
world wide market value for robot systems in 2010 is so estimated to be 17.5
billion $ if keeping into account peripherals.
The world’s robot density by the end of 2010 was about 50
industrial robots in operation per 10,000 employees in manufacturing industry,
seeing stagnation in Japan (which still leads), an increasing growth in South
Korean and Germany which are following up.
The automotive industry has a much higher rate of
automation, reason why for example in Japan the automotive industry has 1,436
industrial robots installed per 10,000 persons employed, while for the other
industries the density goes down to 191. In the US in the automotive sector
there are 1,112 industrial robot per 10,000 employees, but only 69 in the other
sectors. China has seen an interested increase, between 2006 and 2010 the
industrial robots density grew from 37 to 105 in the automotive sector, while
other sectors passed from 30 to 86. For year 2011 a growth in robots
installations is expected to be about 18% and Japan, thanks to new project, is
expected to get back the leading position as robot maker.
China is expected to be one of the top robot makers by
2014. Service Robots are still on the way, there have been in 2009 a growth of
4% and the market is estimated to value 3,2 billion $. Applications of course
still see a great participation of the defense sector, covering 45% of the market;
medical robots follow with 14% and Logistics with 7%.
Key Concepts
Market
