Will smartphones and home appliances be harder to run out of stock? Electronics manufacturing robots reclaim the top spot
Across the global industrial manufacturing landscape, the electrical and electronics industry once again showed strong demand for automation, reclaiming the top position in industrial robot applications in 2024. That year, robot installations in the industry rose 2% to 128,899 units, accounting for 24% of total global installations. Continued expansion of global production capacity has driven a matching rise in the industry’s demand for robots.
For a long time, demand across electronics—including engineering, automotive, industrial machinery, and consumer electronics—has grown strongly. From 2019 to 2024, the compound annual growth rate of robots in the electrical and electronics industry reached 8%. Ongoing upgrades in automation equipment and manufacturing capacity have provided stable production support for the digital products and smart home appliances people use every day.
By contrast, the automotive industry fell to second place among industrial robot customers in 2024, with demand down 7%. Automotive installations dropped to 126,088 units, about 2,800 fewer than in electrical and electronics. The alternating lead between automotive and electronics manufacturing underscores electronics manufacturing’s leading role in the shift toward automation.
As robot installations in electronics manufacturing rose to 24% of the global total, automated production has taken hold across every key stage of the industry. Efficient, stable automation at the manufacturing end will provide a solid foundation for consumers to find a steady supply of digital and home appliance products on the market.
As automakers slow robot investment, will buying new energy vehicles get cheaper?
After years of rapid automation expansion, the automotive industry’s demand for industrial robots fell notably in 2024. As the world’s second-largest application area for industrial robots, automotive robot installations dropped 7% that year to 126,088 units. Although the industry still accounted for 24% of total global installations, the slowdown in its investment pace is an established fact.
The decline in robot purchases reflects the capacity-adjustment pressure automakers face during a period of technological transition. Automakers have been shifting toward alternative powertrains and continuing to invest in the move from internal combustion engines to new energy vehicles. However, the current drop in demand for pure battery electric vehicles has directly limited automakers’ need to further expand capacity on a large scale.
Historically, robot installations in the automotive industry maintained overall growth over the past several years, with a compound annual growth rate of 5% from 2019 to 2024. In 2022 and 2023, automotive’s share of robot installations once reached 25% of the global total. The current investment slowdown looks more like a phase in which, after earlier rapid plant building and equipment rollout, automakers are digesting capacity and adjusting their pace.
For car buyers, the slower pace of automakers’ capacity expansion indicates that the growth rate of market demand for battery electric vehicles is changing. As the automotive industry transitions from internal combustion engines to alternative drive systems, it is reassessing capacity plans in light of current actual demand for pure battery electric vehicles. Adjustments in the pace of automation equipment purchases reflect automakers’ more cautious investment stance amid slowing demand for battery electric cars.
Are robots grabbing bread too? Food factory automation reaches the dinner table
On the cover and in case studies of the newly released World Robotics 2025 report, a collaborative robot in a bakery workshop precisely picks freshly baked bread and packs it into boxes. This kind of manual process that once relied on human labor is now being replaced by highly flexible automation equipment. The introduction of robots into food manufacturing and processing marks how automation is accelerating from heavy industry into consumer goods closely tied to everyday life.
The food and bakery industries place special demands on robots, requiring not only extremely high gripping precision but also coordination with vision sensors and specialized process design. Traditional rigid industrial robot arms struggle to handle food items of varied shapes and soft textures directly, while the combination of new collaborative robots and vision systems has solved this challenge. Customized solutions from system integrators for food production lines have made automation upgrades in these nontraditional sectors more feasible.
As robot technology and intelligent peripheral equipment mature, food producers can further optimize packaging and sorting processes. This production-side automation upgrade not only improves hygiene and efficiency in food processing and packaging, but also helps ensure a stable supply of everyday baked and prepared foods. More and more everyday goods that reach the dining table are now manufactured under this efficient and stable automated production system.
Can street-side workshops use robots too? System integrators lower the barrier
As industrial manufacturing advances toward intelligence, the share of companies using industrial robots across the industry as a whole remains relatively small. For the vast number of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises, a lack of sufficient specialized knowledge, technical capability, and resources is often the main barrier preventing them from fully enjoying the benefits of robot automation. Faced with a tight labor market, how to spread automation know-how among SMEs and move beyond inefficient traditional techniques has become a key industry focus.
Successful deployment of robot systems requires not only the core equipment but also a range of engineering capabilities provided by peripheral supporting facilities such as vision recognition and process design. The high barriers and complexity of these peripheral technologies often directly slow SMEs’ adoption of robots. Without the ability to integrate surrounding technologies and process workflows, many micro and small enterprises find it hard to complete automation upgrades on their own.
In this transition, an ecosystem of system integrators that can deliver professional engineering capabilities is especially critical. A well-developed system integrator ecosystem can effectively fill SMEs’ technical gaps and lower the barrier to deploying robots. Yet shortages of system integration capability often become a bottleneck as well, limiting how far automation technologies penetrate broader production.
To help SMEs overcome technical barriers, many governments are advancing industrial modernization through various policy tools. Beyond direct and indirect subsidies, related support policies are also gradually increasing investment in infrastructure such as robot system integration ecosystems. A sound system integration support framework helps raise the automation level of micro and small workshops, enabling them to respond more confidently to challenges from labor shortages.
Global robot stock hits a record, making everyday goods supply more stable
Against the backdrop of accelerating modernization in global industrial manufacturing, the worldwide operational stock of industrial robots reached a historic high of 4,663,698 units in 2024. That figure was up 9% from the previous year, reflecting the deepening application of automation equipment across industries. Since 2019, the global operational stock of industrial robots has grown steadily at an average annual rate of 11%. This large installed base provides a solid capacity foundation for the stable production of everyday industrial goods.
The continued expansion of the industrial robot operational stock directly reflects the steady rise in overall manufacturing capacity worldwide. As automation equipment is widely deployed on production lines, major industrial sectors have significantly strengthened their ability to respond to fluctuations in market demand. Whether processing everyday consumer goods or manufacturing basic industrial materials, factories have built more efficient and resilient supply chain systems.
Faced with production challenges from recent labor-market shortages, increased equipment investment by factories has become an important means of safeguarding capacity. Large-scale use of robots has effectively eased the risk of production stoppages caused by labor shortages, helping ensure that manufacturing continues to run stably. As robot technology and intelligent supporting facilities keep improving, the full journey of everyday goods from factory to market has become smoother.
Source institutions：International Federation of Robotics
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