Why industrial robot component makers should target cobots
The past few years have been difficult for the robotics and automation sector. Even before the coronavirus pandemic, the situation was challenging. This was because in 2019 demand for traditional internal combustion engine cars fell in the automotive industry, the key consumer of industrial robots.
In addition, the electronics market suffered, as did the machinery market. The expected recovery in 2020 was halted by the COVID-19 crisis, when the global industrial robot market fell 11.1% in revenue and 5.9% in shipments.
But we saw a strong recovery in 2021, as end users resumed long-delayed industrial automation projects.
After 2021, although activity will not be as frantic, strong growth is forecast to continue, not least because the experience of operating factories under social distancing rules has made even the most conservative production line managers seriously consider the potential automation offers.
By 2024, the industrial and collaborative robot market is expected to reach its previous revenue peak of 2018, at $10.5 billion, with 410,000 units shipped.
Collaborative robots are expected to grow 15-20% per year
Before we can understand the robot component sector, we need to look at the changing landscape for industrial and collaborative robots. In 2020, articulated robots accounted for almost 75% of the combined market value of industrial and collaborative robots, at $8.6 billion.
But by 2025, this share is forecast to fall to 70%, while the total market will exceed $11.1 billion. The reason for this decline is that revenue from the automotive industry, the largest end user of articulated robots, will drop from 33.4% of the total market share in 2020 to 31.8% in 2024.
Over the same period, the market for collaborative robots and SCARA (Selective Compliance Articulated Robot Arm) robots will grow faster than average, thanks to the emergence of a number of new industries that will become strong markets for these types of robots.
While the overall industrial robot market will show annual growth of around 4-5%, the collaborative robot sector is expected to grow 15-20% year on year. There is a trend toward smaller robots with lower payloads, as industries such as electronics continue to automate and new industries, such as battery and photovoltaic system manufacturing, increasingly enter the mix.
SCARA robots with payloads under 10 kg, for example, are already the most widely used robotic solution in the electronics sector and have a wide range of applications, including loading and unloading, assembly and inspection. This clear trend toward smaller robots will have a strong impact on the robot component sector.
By 2025, the end-effector market will exceed $2.5 billion
In its latest study of Interact Analysis industrial robot components, all key robot components are considered: motors, drives, gearboxes, controllers, machine vision, sensors and end-effectors.
In 2021, robot components saw a strong double-digit rebound, and the market exceeded its 2018 size of just under $8 billion. This is largely due to rising prices driven by a number of factors, including the semiconductor shortage and inflation.
In 2022 and beyond, lower but still high growth rates are expected, with a compound annual growth rate of 4.1% through 2025.
End-effectors (the end parts of a robot that attach to robotic arms) represent the largest component market and will continue to grow for the foreseeable future, rising from a market value of $1.8 billion in 2020 to more than $2.5 billion in 2025. The combined market for motors, drives and gearboxes is forecast to exceed the value of the end-effector market.
Machine vision and end-effectors show the greatest growth, as their penetration increases due to the growing complexity of automation solutions installed in production facilities. The share of the sensor market is also growing slightly above average, as more sophisticated and more expensive absolute encoders (used to monitor the position of servo motors installed on machines or robots) are increasingly used in applications requiring a high degree of precision.
The trend toward more compact robots with lighter payloads is creating demand for smaller and less powerful motors, drives and gearboxes, which sell at lower market prices than their larger and more powerful counterparts.
Thus, although these components will continue to dominate in terms of their combined market share, revenue growth will be slower than for other component types. Meanwhile, the robot controller market is expected to keep pace with the overall industrial robot market, while training suspensions, already well established in the cobot segment, are likely to grow somewhat as they are deployed in other robot applications.
Component makers should target the "open" segments of the market
While the articulated robot sector, due to its size, appears to represent the largest opportunity for component suppliers, a significant part of the market is captive, and suppliers have strong, if not unbreakable, ties with their end customers.
Instead, component makers hoping to increase their market share should look to the more "open" market opportunities offered by the growing collaborative robot market, where revenue is expected to rise to $1.1 billion by 2025, exceeding even the $865 million in revenue from SCARA robots.
