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Author: Taylor, Editor: Xiaoshimei

On July 30, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued an announcement that according to changes in industry development and relevant work arrangements, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology revised the "Industrial Robot Industry Standard Conditions" and the "Industrial Robot Industry Standard Management Implementation Measures" to form the "Industrial Robot Industry Standard Conditions (2024 Edition)" and "Industrial Robot Industry Standard Conditions Management Implementation Measures (2024 Edition)".

Industrial robot concept stocks also exploded on the same day, with Green Harmonic rising more than 10%, Zhongda Li, Mingzhi Electric, and Keli Sensing hitting their daily limit, and Hechuan Technology and Estun all rising sharply.

Due to factors such as a late start, the development level of my country's robot market, especially industrial robots, lags behind that of major developed countries. For this reason, China attaches great importance to it and is committed to breaking through technical bottlenecks. At the current stage, what breakthrough opportunities does my country's robot market have?

The 14th Five-Year Plan proposes two goals for the development of robots: by 2025, my country will become a global source of innovation in robot technology, a gathering place for high-end manufacturing, and a new highland for integrated applications; by 2035, the comprehensive strength of my country's robot industry will reach an international leading level.

The first step is to tackle the core technology.

In terms of the three core components that are bottlenecks, except for controllers, there are signs that domestic manufacturers are catching up in the fields of servo systems and reducers.

In the field of servo systems, the servo drive products of domestic manufacturer Estun and the "Σ series" products of Yaskawa Electric both have tuning-free functions and basically the same maximum speed. The company is also one of the few domestic companies with a full robot industry chain.

Some of Leadshine Intelligent's servo technologies have reached world-class levels, and it has established long-term cooperative relationships with companies such as BYD, Han's Laser, and Luxshare Precision.

Inovance's servo systems rank among the top five in China's market share and are ranked first among domestic brands.

In the field of reducers, Green Harmonic has obvious advantages in the field of harmonic reducers. The company's share of harmonics in domestic robot brands is about 60%, and it provides services to Estun, EFORT, GSK, Siasun and other companies.

In addition, the company's business is focused, with harmonic reducers and metal parts business revenue accounting for about 95%. Some securities firms predict that in the domestic CNC machine tool field alone, the market size of harmonic reducers will grow at an annual compound growth rate of 45% from 2021 to 2025, with a relatively high ceiling.

Secondly, the high-growth segments mainly include two parts:

First, some robots with relatively low technical barriers, such as AGV robots. Since the core technology threshold of AGV robots is not high and there is no obvious gap in technical levels at home and abroad, domestically produced AGV robots have become the mainstream in the domestic market.

However, this market segment is growing rapidly. Data shows that the average annual compound growth rate of this market reached 57.7% in the four years from 2015 to 2019. In the future, with the increase in e-commerce penetration and the development of smart logistics, this type of robot is expected to continue to maintain a high growth rate.

Second, some long-tail markets with faster growth. The key markets for industrial robots have always been the automotive and 3C electronics sectors, but in recent years, these two markets have gradually become saturated and the growth rate has slowed down significantly. However, sub-markets including food and beverage, photovoltaics and lithium batteries have seen high growth.

In 2019, in the downstream industry applications of industrial robots in my country, the proportion of food and beverage, photovoltaics, and lithium batteries increased by 127%, 55% and 24% year-on-year respectively.

Betting on these high-growth application scenarios will provide domestic industrial robot manufacturers with some shortcuts to break through.

Finally, service robots will be the big cake that will make a comeback.

According to IFR's forecast, by 2023, the domestic service robot market size will exceed 60 billion yuan, surpassing industrial robots to become the largest robot market.

Different from the passive situation of industrial robots being suppressed by foreign capital, service robots are completely light-footed. At present, domestic service robots are not only as good as foreign brands in terms of technology and industrialization level, but even the market application of some products is already ahead of the world.

At present, the application of domestic service robots in cleaning, catering, hotels, medical care, delivery and other fields is becoming more mature. However, except for the listed companies such as Ecovacs and Stone Technology in the field of cleaning robots, the rest of the service robot companies are in the primary market.

In order to break through the robot, domestic brands must not only dare to charge forward and meet challenges head-on, but also focus on service robots in some high-growth areas. Combining these two aspects, we can improve the level of intelligence and build an industrial power.

Disclaimer

The content of this article related to listed companies is the author’s personal analysis and judgment based on the information disclosed by listed companies in accordance with their legal obligations (including but not limited to interim announcements, regular reports and official interactive platforms, etc.); the information or opinions in the article do not constitute any investment or other business advice, and Market Value Observation shall not bear any responsibility for any actions arising from the adoption of this article.