The big positive this year? Another opportunity for the robotics industry!

2022 is a year of rapid growth for China's robot market. The market size has reached 17.4 billion US dollars, with an annual growth rate of more than 20%. In the post-epidemic era of 2023, can robots continue their previous glory and continue to maintain rapid development?

In 2022, China's manufacturing industry accounted for 27.7%, a year-on-year increase of 3%. Since the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the country has been vigorously promoting the transformation of "Made in China" to "Made in China", and the intelligent upgrading of manufacturing will also bring huge market prospects for robots. At present, China's robot density is rising step by step with the wave of development. In 2021, China's robot density of 322 exceeded the United States' 274 for the first time, and it is expected that it may soon surpass Japan and Germany.

The robotics industry is still a hot commodity in the current market

At present, the overall demand for manufacturing is increasing, but there is a labor shortage in the labor market, and difficulty in recruiting workers has become a headache for many companies. Robots are one of the better solutions to this problem. In the three years since the epidemic, we have seen the outstanding contribution of robots to manufacturing, service and other industries.

When talking about its views on the robotics industry, CITIC Securities also said: There is a turning point in fundamentals this year. It is expected that the robotics industry will recover from the bottom in 2023, and the data turning point will be more obvious after Q2 2023. At the same time, there is policy catalysis this year. In the context of building a strong manufacturing country and a decreasing total population, the robotics industry will usher in a policy dividend period. In January 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and 17 other departments issued the "Robot +" Application Action Implementation Plan, which clarified the development goals of the robotics industry during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period. The robotics market also has a clear theme. Under the catalysis of industrial transformation events such as humanoid robots and ChatGPT, the robotics industry has become the focus of the market, and robots are an important carrier of AI technology. Under the interaction of multiple elements, I believe that the robotics industry will usher in overall opportunities.

Components first create new markets and new trends

Compared with the development history of smartphones, the robot industry will have a "components first" development trend in the future. Among them, the core components such as servo systems, reducers, sensors, etc. have relatively high gross profit margins, accounting for more than 50% of the robot, and have great potential. According to relevant institutions, the global service robot market space will reach 155.8 billion yuan in 2026 , which is expected to drive the core component market, and domestic related manufacturers will benefit.

Recently, Green Harmonic and Sanhua Intelligent Control issued an announcement that the two companies signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement. The two parties will establish a joint venture in Sanhua Intelligent Control's Mexican Industrial Park with a registered capital of no less than 10 million US dollars. The joint venture will utilize Green Harmonic's product advantages and Sanhua Intelligent Control's customer and channel advantages to jointly expand the global market.

Sanhua Intelligent Control is a global leading parts manufacturer with more than 30 years of history, while Green Harmonic is an enterprise engaged in the research, design and production of precision transmission devices. The cooperation between the two companies in the parts market segment proves that in the early stages of the development of the robotics industry, parts manufacturers have a "first-mover" trend.

In recent years, the Chinese robot industry has been accelerating the process of localization replacement and breaking the overseas technology monopoly. In addition to lowering the cost of using robots, it can also promote the development of China's own robot industry chain. Under the general trend of commercialization of various emerging robot products, the advantages of domestic high-cost-effective parts are highlighted, and it is expected to gain a larger share in the world.

Demand for industrial robots is expected to continue to grow

As robots replace manual labor, the demand for robots is expected to continue to grow in downstream applications. The demand for industrial robots in some strategic emerging fields such as photovoltaics, energy storage, hydrogen energy, and the automotive field, which has huge demand, will continue to increase.

On January 5, the China Passenger Car Association announced that the sales of new energy vehicles in 2022 will reach 6.49 million, a year-on-year increase of 96% from 3.31 million in 2021. With the continuous promotion of new energy vehicle policies and subsidies in various regions, the demand for new energy vehicles is expected to continue to rise in 2023, and it is planned that by 2035, the market share of new energy vehicles will exceed 50%. The huge new energy market has also benefited industrial robots, and the proportion of industrial robots installed in automobile production accounts for more than 25%.

Along with the automotive sector, emerging strategic fields such as photovoltaics are also major exporters of industrial robots. In the first half of 2022, investment in photovoltaic capacity exceeded 600 billion yuan, and leading companies frequently announced investments of tens of billions of yuan. Cross-border players continue to pour in, and production capacity is still accelerating. At present, the production of photovoltaic cells requires 24-hour uninterrupted operation, and operators need to work in three shifts. The labor intensity is high, resulting in high personnel mobility and a sharp increase in enterprise management costs. The use of industrial robots is imminent. According to statistics, in 2021, AGV/AMR in the photovoltaic industry accounted for 5.2% of the overall market, with sales of approximately 3,500 units and a scale of over 600 million yuan. In the photovoltaic industry where production capacity continues to accelerate, the demand for robots will be driven again.

“AI+Robot” concept opens up new markets

This year, the biggest topic in the field of artificial intelligence is ChatGPT developed by the OpenAI team. Soon after, global technology companies joined the AI ​​revolution, and AI models became a large-scale arms race. Robots are an important carrier of AI. The development of AI is bound to drive the development of the robot industry, and robots have also opened up a new market of "AI+robots". At present, the value of the AI ​​big data model industry has exceeded one trillion yuan. As a carrier of artificial intelligence, robots will also open up an immeasurable market with this trend.