Asia Pacific spending on robotics and related services will more than double, growing from $60 billion in 2016 to over $133 billion in 2020, according to the newly released IDC Worldwide Commercial Robotics Spending Guide.

This represents a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 22%.

This new robotics spending guide now includes data on commercial and consumer purchases of drones and after-market drone hardware in addition to spending data on robotic systems, system hardware, software, robotics-related services, and after-market robotics hardware.

"Robotics continues to drive the current wave of industry transformation and upgrade, which is set to disrupt many aspects of business operations, leading to tremendous improvement in operational agility, responsiveness and customer experience,” says Dr Jing Bing Zhang, Research Director, Worldwide Robotics and Asia Pacific Manufacturing Insights, IDC Asia/Pacific.

"In Asia Pacific, we are seeing accelerated growth in robotics adoption beyond manufacturing, especially in commercial and consumer service robotics," adds Dr. Zhang.

Manufacturing continues to dominate

Asia Pacific is the fastest growing robotics market led by China, Korea and Japan, and will account for more than two thirds of worldwide robotics spending throughout the 2016-2020 forecast period, reaching over 70% by 2020.

Manufacturing continues to dominate Asia Pacific spending in robotics, with discrete and process manufacturing accounting for 33% and 28% respectively in 2016.

This is followed by resources, consumer, and healthcare industries in terms of overall robotics spending.

From a technology perspective, Asia Pacific spending on robotic systems which includes industrial, service and consumer robots and after-market robotic hardware, is forecast to grow to $64 billion in 2020.

Opportunities

Services-related spending, which encompasses application management, education and training, hardware deployment, system integration, and consulting, will grow to over $36 billion in 2020.

The 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 global data is designed to help suppliers targeting the market to identify market opportunities and execute an effective strategy.

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets.