24 Fun Facts about Industrial Robotics
My colleague Emerson Alden and I recently published a report on the state of industrial robotics, along with a spreadsheet of all of our underlying data and analysis. The report has lots of analysis, context, and what we think are the most interesting takeaways. This post has none of those things. This is a list of facts we found interesting, in no particular order.
Japanese- and European-headquartered companies account for 85% of global industrial robotics revenue. Japan alone accounts for half.
No Chinese-headquartered company holds more than 2% of the global market for traditional industrial robots, despite China having more robot companies than any other country.
The average Japanese company making industrial robots is about 90 years old, and started manufacturing robots around 1980.
Only 10 companies in the world make a robot that can lift more than 600 kg, and 8 of them are Japanese or European. (The remaining two are both Chinese). The strongest industrial robot is FANUC’s 2,300 kg robot.
No significant industrial robotics company has been founded in Japan since 1985. China has produced at least 14 in the last two decades alone.
In 2024, the U.S. overtook China as the world’s largest net importer of industrial robots. China’s robot trade deficit fell 91% between 2023 and 2024. (NB: 2024 Comtrade figures may still be subject to revision.)
All of the 16 Japanese companies making industrial robots are publicly traded. (Globally, around half of robotics companies are publicly traded).
The oldest company selling industrial robots today is Schneider Electric, which was founded in 1836 as an iron forge. Schneider Electric released its first robot in 2022, 186 years later.
Chinese robot makers have a median profit margin of just under 1%, versus over 4% industry-wide, even with substantial subsidies.
The world’s four largest industrial robot manufacturers – FANUC, ABB, Yaskawa, and KUKA – capture around half of global robotics revenue, and all four started making robots in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Three Chinese provinces account for around 80% of China’s tracked CNC machining shops. Chinese CNC machining shops get over 60% of their demand from orders of less than 50 units.
Historically, nearly all companies sourced precision reducers from two Japanese companies (Harmonic Drive Systems and Nabtesco), though Chinese robot manufacturers increasingly buy from domestic suppliers.
Japan is consistently the largest net exporter of industrial robots. Denmark is the world’s second largest net exporter of industrial robots, behind only Japan. Its net exports grew nearly 30x over the last decade, likely because of Universal Robots’ growth.
China sources nearly all of its textile robots domestically but imports 69% of its automotive robots. Automotive robots typically require greater hardware precision.
Cobots (smaller robots meant to operate safely around humans) are on average 2.6x less precise than traditional industrial robots. AI integration into cobots can compensate for less precise hardware.
Harmonic Drive Systems, the world’s largest manufacturer of strain-wave reducers, is running its plants at just 50% capacity.
Weighted by revenue, the average industrial robotics company was founded in 1934.
Leaderdrive went from supplying around 13% of Universal Robots’ precision reducers in 2018 to around 31% in 2019.
Seven of the world’s industrial robot makers were founded before 1900.
FANUC, ABB, KUKA, and Yaskawa only control around 10-20% of the cobot market, despite controlling around half of the overall robot market.
Six of the world’s top 10 cobot makers are likely Chinese.
The typical Chinese municipal subsidy for purchasing industrial robots covers 17.5% of the purchase price, and 80% of subsidies exceed 10% of the price.
In 2016, government subsidies accounted for between 4% and 49% of the net profits of China’s four largest publicly traded robot makers.
China’s robot fleet is larger than the next nine countries combined, but robot density (number of robots relative to the number of manufacturing workers) is still higher in the US than in China.
Note: For facts here where we did no original data analysis, I cite the source directly. Otherwise, all analysis and underlying sources are in this spreadsheet.