Robots are the machines most likely to arouse people's emotions. Industrial robots were once the most important spokespersons for high-tech equipment. People believe that the installed base of robots represents a country's manufacturing capability. Out of the 570,000 newly installed industrial robots globally in 2025, China accounts for 56%. China’s installed base is nearly seven times that of Japan, the world’s second-largest market, and greater than the combined total of the second to fifth-ranked countries.
By the end of 2024, the total number of industrial robots in service in Chinese factories had exceeded 2 million, accounting for nearly 44% of the global total installed base. In contrast, Japan's installed base is about 450,000 units, making China's "total troop strength" 4.5 times that of Japan.
In terms of robots rapidly entering factories, Chinese robots have gained a strategic home-court advantage. Yet just a decade ago, whether China could mass-produce industrial robots was still a shaky proposition. The "Big Four"—FANUC, Yaskawa, ABB, and KUKA—almost ruled the entire market. Once upon a time, whoever could produce 1,000 domestic robots was considered a top master. Now, there are already five manufacturers in China with an annual output of over 10,000 units. How was this decisive advantage achieved?
The Entry Point for Scaling Up In the history of robot development, standardized products have been the key to driving large-scale popularization and application. Only ultra-large-scale industries can drive industrial robots to take off. The earliest rise of the robot industry benefited from the pull of the automotive market. Consumer electronics, on the other hand, drove the rise of four-axis horizontal SCARA robots.
Industries with scaled production inherently have high demands for automation; using robots is just a matter of timing. This is the global trend in robot usage. However, photovoltaics and lithium batteries are industries that have emerged in the Chinese market with particularly heavy robot usage. These new industries taking off right at home have brought huge opportunities for China's industrial robots. Since 2020, Chinese robots have begun to grow rapidly. The prosperity of these four industries has become a key barometer for the industrial robot market.
SCARA robots were the first to break through. The four-axis SCARA robot arm is the boss of parts handling on flat surfaces. It has low degrees of freedom, initially just screwing on flat surfaces, and later extending to inspection, assembly, flat surface glue dispensing, and other fields. SCARA four-axis planar robots are widely used, accounting for about 25% of the entire industrial robot market.
However, this is a highly cost-sensitive market driven by price. After 2009, the boom in smartphones triggered a surge in SCARA demand. Since then, prices have started to drop significantly. In 2009, an Epson SCARA robot cost 90,000 RMB, with customers mainly being electronic service manufacturers like Foxconn. By 2025, domestic prices had dropped to around 20,000 RMB.
However, the customer base has not changed much. The price of SCARA robots has been dropping without an increase in volume. SCARA robots have become a stock market with weak growth and a lack of evolution. This is because the standardization level of its components is too high, and the widespread vision, motion control, and motor technologies in China have led to an overly prosperous supply chain market. Even non-standard equipment manufacturers hardly need customization, as it can be achieved through programming software.
SCARA robots will not be locked solely in the smartphone industry. With the rise of smart hardware, they will seek more fertile grounds. In 2025, smartphones approached 1.26 billion units, while in 2026, this number will drop to around 1.1 billion units. This will deal a blow to SCARA robot demand. However, the rise of smart hardware such as AI glasses, DingTalk voice transcription devices, bone conduction earphones, and health rings is expected to fill the gap left by smartphone production lines.
However, the planar exclusivity and four-axis control of SCARA robots determine that their threshold is not very high. Its components, such as joint arms, reducers, and motion control systems, can be said to be readily available in China. The excessive prosperity of China's supply chain is pushing robots to evolve towards standardized products and even bulk commodities. This constitutes a disaster for the evolution of the industry. No one can win by relying on innovative technology; scale-driven growth overrides technological innovation. SCARA robots were the first to reveal the harsh realities of industrial robot commoditization. This trend of supply chain homogenization and white-hot competition will continue to spread in other robot fields.
Kings in the Crevices For more complex robots, Chinese companies started to grow from the direction of non-standard robots. General-purpose robots often target scaled industries, but they leave small crevices in vertical industries. These crevices, though small in number, will be filled by Chinese robots searching for opportunities everywhere.
The breakthrough in bending robots can clearly demonstrate the tactical approach of Chinese manufacturing breaking through from niche markets. Around 2015, loading and unloading for bending machines was mainly manual. Due to adapting to manual operation scenarios, the loading ports of bending machines were generally about 1 meter from the ground. General-purpose six-axis robots began to be introduced, but they were actually not suitable for the spatial layout. Their upper arms were relatively high, leaving a small effective stroke space for grabbing sheet materials and moving upwards.
To adapt to the structural characteristics of the robots, many sheet metal factories had to dig pits in the ground to provide effective movement space for the 3rd and 4th axes. This deep pit installation extended the robot deployment cycle to over two months. However, none of the Big Four robot makers were willing to modify their designs to adapt to the bending machine loading scenario. A monopolized market will breed arrogance among leading brands. Brand arrogance leads to an unquestioned industry paradigm, forcing user enterprises to modify their own setups to accommodate all the inconveniences of existing products.
Challengers are very willing to challenge the leading enterprises' negligence of user needs. Nanjing Estun, through its own bending machine control system, integrated it with robots. It joined forces with several leading bending machine manufacturers such as Yawei and Jinfangyuan to develop a dedicated bending robot with a short upper arm and a long 4th axis. This allows the robot to be installed directly on the ground without the need for civil construction, trenching, or breaking up the workshop floor. Compared to the ground piling method of general-purpose robots, specially customized bending robots can be deployed within a week.
The deep integration with scenarios has made this type of sheet metal bending robot the earliest brand to validate the niche market strategy. When sheet metal bending robots subsequently became standard equipment, the quantity of these robots began to scale up gradually. Those robot manufacturers who defined automation in vertical industries can reap the dividends of traditional industry expansion.
Sweeping Synchronized Prosperity Once triggered, China's industrial dividends have a sweeping, unstoppable momentum. Chinese industries are characterized by long periods of dormancy, but once they emerge, they grow wildly. Moso bamboo remains quiet underground for a long time, but after breaking through the soil, it only takes 30 days to reach its lifetime height. This "moso bamboo model" of growing taller and stronger in one go is exactly how Chinese robots achieve rapid growth.
The explosive capacity growth driven by China’s scale expansion resembles a wild, untamed horse, hard for conservative players to rein in. SCARA four-axis robots used in the consumer electronics field generally have payloads ranging from 3kg to 20kg. This is the area of advantage for Japan's Epson. However, in emerging industries like power batteries, whether it is the precise alignment and stacking of positive and negative electrode sheets and separators, or the precise pressing of sealing nails in 5 seconds, these are all places where SCARA robots can shine.
In 2021, CATL's prismatic cell technology became the main technical direction of the industry. And a race to develop such products kicked off. Japan's Yamaha was the first to launch a heavy-duty SCARA with a 50kg payload. Just three months later, Estun, Inovance, and Step Electric almost simultaneously launched 50kg heavy-duty SCARA robots. At that time, Epson was still hesitating and verifying the market value of the heavy-duty SCARA direction.
The significance of SCARA robots in the power battery field is vastly different for domestic brands and foreign enterprises. For domestic brands, this is a new battlefield to redefine the rules. In traditional fields, domestic robots, with performance generally insufficient to shake foreign brands, had to rely on services and prices to attack from a lower position. However, for lithium batteries, Chinese and foreign brands appeared on the same starting line at the same time. The ability of Chinese robot manufacturers to customize for niche markets and their rapid response capabilities are the core competitiveness to seize important industry opportunities.
In the photovoltaic field, product production is extremely sensitive to oil leakage. Silicon wafers and battery cells are ultra-clean surfaces; a single drop of oil or a bit of mist will lead to poor coating and a large number of broken wafer scraps. It can be said that the photovoltaic industry has zero tolerance for oil leakage, which is an order of magnitude higher in cleanliness requirements than consumer electronics and automobiles. China's robot pioneers have all seized this brand-new requirement and made huge progress. Foreign enterprises with slow decision-making will be squeezed out.
When China's lithium batteries were taking off at high speed, Epson, which misjudged the situation, had already missed the opportunity. In this highly evolved market in China, any new territory will attract swarms of competitors. If a manufacturer misses a step, it is often difficult to board the high-speed industry train again.
The "Wall-Breaking" Action in Automotive Welding Lines In the robot category, the sales stars for single products are arc welding robots and spot welding robots. The welding assembly of a single car involves nearly 4,000 welding spots. This also makes arc welding and spot welding robots jointly represent the highest point of industrial robots. The operation of spot welding robots is extremely efficient, taking only 0.2 to 0.5 seconds to complete a single high-current instantaneous welding, and it must quickly and accurately cross and position to the next welding spot within 1 second. This market has always been monopolized by the Big Four robot families.
The price of six-axis arc welding robots from foreign manufacturers dropped from 150,000 RMB in 2017 to around 80,000 RMB in 2025. In contrast, the price of spot welding robots has remained relatively stable, dropping from roughly 180,000 RMB to about 150,000 RMB over seven or eight years. This price gap also reflects the situation of Chinese robots breaking through in this field. The more a field is monopolized by foreign brands, the more firm the prices will be.
The situation has been opened up. Chengdu Canrobo already has a very strong presence in arc welding robots. Starting from controllers, it naturally has a good breakthrough gene. Anhui Wuhu Efort Robot, which was originally spun off from Chery's equipment division, bears the innate mission of breaking through in the territory of automotive robots. The automotive industry is a must-win highland, and the next commanding height lies in spot welding robots. This remains the domain of Japanese robots.
The reason why domestic robots have not been able to break through the encirclement lies in the fact that the development of China's automotive industry unfolded in the form of joint ventures. Foreign brands were given priority for robots. Domestic enterprises such as Geely and Great Wall, as challengers, needed to quickly occupy the market, and key equipment often adopted a follow-the-leader tactic. For challengers striving to catch up, there is no window for any mistakes in equipment, and it is also difficult to give domestic suppliers time to trial and error.
In the past two years, with the rise of Chinese electric vehicles, many automotive OEMs such as BYD have begun to open the door to the application of domestic robots. This has given China the opportunity to tear open a gap in the two major automotive welding robots. Among the new robot orders from automotive OEMs in 2025, the investment in Xiaomi Auto's new production line contributed a significant increment.
As an investment in new production lines, an increment of over 2,000 arc welding and spot welding robots is a huge cake. As the urgency of Xiaomi Auto's deliveries decreases, new capacity will have the opportunity to open up to domestic robots. Whether it is Chengdu Canrobo or Nanjing Estun, they are all rushing into the sunniest beach. These enterprises are refreshing the records of domestic arc welding robots. As long as there are sales of over 1,000 units, the advantage will be very obvious.
However, in the field of spot welding robots, which yields the most lucrative profits, Chinese domestic brands still cannot rival FANUC and ABB. This payload of over 150kg is China's disadvantage. But the wild horse of catching up has followed. Chengdu Canrobo, which originated from controllers, has already opened a breach in the field of welding robots. Benefiting from the rapid development of BYD Auto, Canrobo has also grown rapidly. As Chinese robot makers compete fiercely across more niche segments, the market share of foreign brands will further shrink.
The Three-Trench Battle of the Supply Chain On the one hand, Chinese robots need to achieve basic supply chain autonomy, and on the other hand, they must march towards the top of the pyramid. China's large aircraft and commercial aerospace have brought huge imagination to the high-end development of Chinese robots. Chinese robots need to be able to shift the experience of scaled automotive production to the higher-level rocket production. Only if the manufacturing of rockets and satellites can see the shadow of China's industrial robots will it truly be the takeoff of China's high-end manufacturing.
But why is it difficult to transfer automotive robots? For automotive spot welding robots, rapid positioning and high precision are important. However, aviation aircraft often involve spaces of about three meters, requiring positioning on inclined curved surfaces. Whether it is welding, hole making, or fiber laying, the entire trajectory process must not deviate.
However, the difficulty of high-end robot development lies not only in the manufacturing difficulties of the robot body itself but also in the guarantee of the supply chain.
Although the RV reducers from Shuanghuan Driveline and Beijing Zhitong have already achieved a good market share in domestic robots, the RV reducers for heavy-duty robots remain monopolized by Japan's Nabtesco. The global market share of high-end heavy-duty RV is about 70%, and in China, the proportion of supporting robots over 500kg exceeds 90%. From heavy-duty RV reducer robots, once again exposing bottlenecks in China’s fundamental manufacturing processes: control of oxygen and sulfur content in bearing steel, grinding of ultra-precise cycloid gears, micron-level assembly of multiple parts, clearance control, long-life lubrication systems, etc.
Similarly, in terms of motors, although China has broken the monopoly of Japan's Tamagawa in small motors, in the field of high-density heavy-duty servo motors with ultra-large torque, it is still the domain of high-end foreign brands (such as Kollmorgen, Yaskawa, etc.).
Every component is a roadblock. Every material requires clear composition. This is the long and arduous road for China's high-end robots.
However, as long as the robot body can gain a firm foothold with super users, Chinese brands will have the opportunity to comprehensively change the market landscape. Once Japanese robot firms’ status as supply chain leaders starts to waver, the collapse of the supply chain order will be decisive. As some players decline, others rise; China's supply chain, such as reducers, servos, or motors, is climbing rapidly.
The book "Supply Chain Offense and Defense" has analyzed this three-trench warfare model of the supply chain. Once the first trench of the brand shows relaxation, it will lead to the penetration of the second trench of the supply chain. The next step will be to enter the field of materials or core components.
The harmonic reducer for robots has always been considered difficult to overcome, and Japan's Harmonic Drive is an insurmountable high mountain. However, China's Leaderdrive started from a single harmonic reducer, gradually independently developing core tooth profiles, material heat treatment, and precision assembly technologies, and extending to high-end servo systems. Leaderdrive has already established a factory in a town in Suzhou. The former residents are now manufacturing precision reducers here. An enterprise reaching for the sky directly pulls the local native residents to the peak of the mountain. Meanwhile, Midea KUKA at the Shunde robot base is playing the role of the chain owner, activating the entire harmonic reducer production line.
China's supply chain is maturing rapidly, making robot manufacturing easier. This further accelerates the commodification of robots. The impact it brings is not only the standardization of traditional industrial robots, but even collaborative robots are not spared.
For collaborative robots, the most critical links are joints and software. Shenzhen Kinco, which started with motion control, can already provide joint modules. Enterprises only need to purchase harmonic reducers to easily manufacture joints. Kollmorgen has even started to provide joints. Other enterprises provide electronic control and software. These highly specialized supply chains have greatly reduced the manufacturing difficulty of collaborative robots. This also further weakens the bargaining power of these products.
This is a turn for industrial robots, silent yet reversing direction. And the rise of Chinese manufacturing on the supply chain side is the most hidden and strategically significant victory.
Postscript: Challenging the Big Four The evolution speed of Chinese robots is rapid, completing three major breakthroughs within a decade. It has experienced entering the consumer electronics field, positioning in vertical industries, and taking root in China's advantageous industries. Now, it is undergoing a fourth breakthrough, which is cutting into the automotive industry, the most mainstream market. And above this are the heavy-duty, large-sized top-tier industries in the aircraft and rocket sectors.
The application fields of domestic robots reflect the dream of China becoming a manufacturing powerhouse. The high-end industrial market is the biggest driving force for the breakthrough of Chinese robots. If Chinese manufacturers can leverage new energy vehicles (NEVs) to rise to the top and further break through aircraft and rocket manufacturing, the global industrial robot industry order will be completely reversed. The definition of the Big Four in industrial robots will be rewritten. In this list, there will be the first, second, and perhaps more Chinese industrial robot manufacturers.
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About the Author Lin Xueping: General Manager of Beijing Lianxun Dynamics Consulting Co., Ltd., Visiting Researcher at the China Quality Development Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and author of "Supply Chain Offense and Defense" and "The Great Going Global".
Special thanks to Wang Jian, industry researcher at Beijing Lianxun Dynamics Consulting Co., Ltd., for his strong support.