In Europe, Germany is the leader in terms of production of industrial robots. Prone to innovation and R&D, the German robotics is booming and and offer radically different robots in comparison to its competitors, namely Asia, the U.S., Italy and France. Let’s have a look at the state of the global market for robotics and forecasts for the German production in 2014.
Overview on the global robotics market
Robotics is an essential part of the industry and the key to an increasingly fast and accurate production. Indeed, industrial robots are also leading players of the industry 4.0 Industry, the next industrial revolution taking place on the other side of the Rhine. An inherent aspect of the global robotics market is its comprehensive ecosystem, where each country present on the market specializes in a sub-branch of the robotics industry.
Germany, is for example famous for being specialised in mechatronics, while France focuses more on softwares. On the Italian side, robots for medical use are the most popular, while Asian countries (Korea especially) focus increasingly on the so-called service robots. The United States also see great potential in the field of human services, but favorise robotics for the defense sector. This industry is therefore full of many highly specialized sources, which promote trade on an international level. This is what allows Germany to stay on top, since it brings together more than the half of its turnover thanks to the export.
Rising branches of German robotics sector and new application fields
If the growth of this sector in 2013 was quite shy with an increase of only 1% of turnover, a growth of 4 % is expected for 2014. Through exchanges with the United States and Asian countries, Germany had succeeded in 2013 to record a turnover of 10.5 billion euros, thanks to a trend towards automation showing an increasingly strong presence in the global industry. This trend is explained by a growing fierce competition, pushing the industry to thrive and provide shorter production deadlines allowed by the purchase of new industrial robots.
Among the various industrial branches where robotics is massively used include the image processing sector which has shown a growth of 5 % in 2013, while the automotive industry is first customer in terms of purchase of industrial robots acquiring 50% of the total German production. The VDMA also expects an increase in demand from the sectors of electronics and pharmaceuticals, but above all, as mentioned earlier, the industry service robots sector.
In fact, according to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR), nearly 16,100 service robots were recently sold for business purposes worldwide, furthermore, since 2006 the branch would have experienced a steady growth of 10 % each year. Can also be mentioned the democratization of the use of robots in the fields of farming, medicine and logistics.
With forecasts announcing the sale of 95,000 service robots in the world between 2013 and 2016, Germany should then focus more on the service robots whose manufacturers are fond of to stay ahead in terms of industrial robots production.
