"China continues to lead the growth of worldwide robotics adoption, primarily driven by strong spending growth in process manufacturing and cross-industry applications,” says Dr. Jing Bing Zhang, Research Director, Worldwide Robotics and Asia Pacific Manufacturing Insights, IDC Asia/Pacific.

"In China, we are also seeing an accelerated growth in the adoption of commercial service robots especially for automated material handling in factories, warehouses and logistics facilities," added Dr. Zhang.

China is the single largest and the fastest growing robotics market in the world, and will account for more than 30% of the worldwide robotics spending in 2020. Manufacturing continues to dominate China spending in robotics, with discrete and process manufacturing accounting for over 50% of spending in 2016.

From a technology perspective, China spending on robotic systems, which includes industrial, service and consumer robots and after-market robotic hardware, is expected to hit $29 billion in 2020. Services-related spending, which encompasses application management, education and training, hardware deployment, system integration, and consulting, will grow to over $15.8 billion in 2020.