"Robotics continues to drive the current wave of industry transformation and upgrade, which is set to disrupt many aspects of business operations, leading to tremendous improvement in operational agility, responsiveness and customer experience,” says Dr. Jing Bing Zhang, Research Director, Worldwide Robotics and Asia Pacific Manufacturing Insights, IDC Asia/Pacific.

"In Asia Pacific, we are seeing accelerated growth in robotics adoption beyond manufacturing, especially in commercial and consumer service robotics," adds Dr. Zhang.

Asia Pacific is the fastest growing robotics market led by China, Korea and Japan, and will account for more than two thirds of worldwide robotics spending throughout the 2016-2020 forecast period, reaching over 70% by 2020. Manufacturing continues to dominate Asia Pacific spending in robotics, with discrete and process manufacturing accounting for 33% and 28% respectively in 2016. This is followed by resources, consumer, and healthcare industries in terms of overall robotics spending.

From a technology perspective, Asia Pacific spending on robotic systems which includes industrial, service and consumer robots and after-market robotic hardware, is forecast to grow to $64 billion in 2020. Services-related spending, which encompasses application management, education and training, hardware deployment, system integration, and consulting, will grow to over $36 billion in 2020.