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Not surprisingly, worldwide robotics spending is dominated by the discrete and process manufacturing industries, which represented 33.2% and 30.2% of total spending in 2015, respectively. Resource, healthcare, and the transportation industries are the next three largest commercial industries in terms of overall robotics spending. Process manufacturing and healthcare are two of the fastest-growing industries, with worldwide spending in each forecast to nearly double by 2019.

From a technology perspective, worldwide spending on robotics systems, which includes consumer, industrial and service robots, is forecast to grow to nearly $32bn in 2019. However, services-related spending, which encompasses applications management, education and training, hardware deployment, systems integration, and consulting, will grow to more than $32bn in 2019, overtaking robotics systems and becoming both the largest and fastest-growing category of spending by the end of the forecast. Total spending on system hardware (servers and storage) and software (command and control, network infrastructure, and robotics-specific applications) will grow nearly as fast as services spending.

The Asia/Pacific region, including Japan, accounts for more than 65 percent of total robotics spending throughout the forecast. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa is the second-largest region with expenditures of $14.6bn in 2015, followed by the Americas with 2015 spending totals of $9.7bn. Robotics spending will nearly double in Asia/Pacific over the 2015-2019 forecast period, making it the fastest-growing region followed by the Americas.

Source: IDC