The sales volume of industrial robots in China accounts for more than 50% of the global market, and the market share of domestic brands continues to rise
Emerging industry is the main field of industrial robot shipment
According to statistics, the sales volume of industrial robots in the Chinese market will exceed 300000 in 2022, accounting for more than 50% of the global sales volume. It is not easy to achieve such achievements under the serious impact of the epidemic.
From the perspective of the application industry, it is mainly driven by the demand of new energy vehicles, lithium batteries, photovoltaic, semiconductor, medical and other emerging industries. The trend of new energy explosion is not decreasing, and the market production and sales are booming. The major well-known new energy vehicle enterprises are expanding their production capacity, which has stimulated the market demand for lithium batteries. According to statistics, the shipments of new energy vehicles and industrial robots in emerging industries account for more than 40% of the overall market.
In 2023, the overall recovery trend of the market will be obvious under the condition of the full liberalization of the epidemic situation. As a key product to promote industrial upgrading, the long-term trend of the market has not changed, and it will maintain double-digit growth in the next few years, of which the new energy automobile industry will undoubtedly be the largest demand.
According to the data of China Association of Automobile Manufacturers, in 2022, China's new energy vehicles will continue to grow explosively, with annual sales of more than 6.8 million vehicles and market share rising to 25.6%, gradually entering the period of comprehensive market expansion, which is planned to increase to 50% by 2035. Not only China, but also the United States has proposed to reach 50% penetration rate by 2035, and the European Union is more aggressive, which is expected to increase to 100% by 2035, and stop selling all fuel vehicles and hybrid vehicles.
Although new energy vehicles are similar to fuel vehicles, they also have many different processes, and their degree of automation is higher than that of fuel vehicles, which means that new energy vehicle production lines will be built, or large-scale transformation and expansion of the old production lines will be carried out, which will bring huge demand for industrial robots.
Domestic robot market share continues to rise
After years of development, Chinese robot industry has basically formed a whole industrial chain system from parts to complete machines to integrated applications. The innovation of core technologies and key parts has been promoted in an orderly manner. Domestic robots have ushered in an inflection point, and are expected to gradually move from replication to technology leadership, and from domestic substitution to overseas expansion.
In the past year, domestic manufacturers, relying on supply chain advantages and flexible pricing strategies, have accelerated their penetration in lithium battery, photovoltaic, semiconductor, auto parts and other fields. At the same time, relying on local advantages, they have gradually expanded more new application fields in the downstream of the industry, explored broader incremental market space, and further expanded the market share of domestic robots.
However, due to the impact of the epidemic, the supply chain of foreign manufacturers was not smooth, the supply cycle was greatly extended, and the market share was gradually reduced, until recently, the production and delivery were gradually restored.
With the further deepening of the localization process of foreign brands from supply chain, R&D to production, the localization advantages and cost control advantages of domestic manufacturers will also be weakened. So if domestic robots want to maintain competitiveness, they need to raise technical barriers, continue to optimize the quality of robot products, and accelerate the pace of catching up with overseas industrial robot brands.