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Recent years have been tough for the robotics and automation sector. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, the situation was challenging. For example, in 2019, the automotive sector – a key consumer of industrial robots – saw weakened demand for traditional internal combustion vehicles. Additionally, the electronics market was also stuttering, as was the machine builders’ market. And the expected 2020 rebound was stymied by the COVID-19 crisis, with the global industrial robot market falling by 11.1% in revenue terms, and by 5.9% in shipment terms.
But today, we are seeing a strong 2021 rebound as end customers resume much-delayed industrial automation projects. Beyond 2021, although activity will not be so frenzied, Interact Analysis predicts continued strong growth, not least because the experience of operating factories along social distancing lines has made even the most conservative production line managers think hard about the potential that automation offers. By 2024, the market for industrial and collaborative robots (cobots) should achieve its previous 2018 revenue peak of $10.5 billion, with 410,000 units shipped.
Strong Growth for Collaborative Robots
Before we can fully understand the robot components sector, we must first examine the changing industrial and collaborative robotics landscape. In 2020, articulated robots accounted for nearly 75% of the combined $8.6 billion market value of industrial and collaborative robots. But by 2025, Interact Analysis predicts that share will drop to 70%, while the combined market will itself exceed $11.1 billion.
The reason for the drop is that revenues from the automotive sector, the biggest end-user of articulated robots, will fall from 33.4% of the total market share in 2020 to 31.8% in 2024. Over the same period, the market for collaborative and SCARA robots will see faster than average growth, owing to the emergence of a range of new industries which will constitute strong new markets for these types of robot (Figure 1, below).
Figure 1: Revenue Growth by Robot Type (Source: Interact Analysis)
While the overall industrial robot market is forecast to see annual growth of the order of 4% – 5%, the collaborative robot sector is expected to enjoy 15%-20% year-on-year growth. At Interact Analysis, we are seeing a trend towards smaller, lower payload robots, as industries such as electronics continue to automate, and new industries such as battery manufacturing and PV manufacturing increasingly come on stream.
SCARA robots with a payload usually of <10 kg, for example, are already the most widely used robot solution in the electronics sector, and have a broad range of applications, including material handling, assembly, and inspection. This clear trend towards smaller robots will heavily impact the robot components sector.
End Effector Market Tops $2.5B by 2025
In the latest Interact Analysis industrial robot component research, all the key robot components: were considered – motors, drives, gearboxes, controllers, machine vision, sensors, and end effectors. 2021 saw a strong double-digit rebound for components used in robots, and this year the market will exceed its 2018 size of just under $8 billion. This is due in no small part to prices being forced up by a number of factors including the semiconductor shortage and inflation. For 2022 and beyond we anticipate lower but still strong levels of growth, with a 4.1% CAGR out to 2025, and revenues projected to hit $9.3 billion that year (Figure 2, below).
Figure 2: Key Components in Industrial Robots – Revenues by Product <…….