A report from Japan Robot Association (JARA) dated May 23 reveals Japan’s robot purchase order in 2017 (including non-members of JARA) worth 944,700 million yen with the increase from 2016 by 27.8%. It was the first time of Japan had reached the purchase order of more than 900,000 million yen due to the rapid demand of robot and automation system expansion across the world caused by the lack of the labor and the important drive force from China.         
 
In addition, the robot delivery volume had increased from 2016 by 25.1% to 895,600 million yen which was a new record high. The export volume consisted of China’s export worth 259,900 million yen, grew by 49% from the previous year’s. 

An analyst from JARA expected that the increase of China’s volume came from the Chinese government’s policy to drive the utilization of robots and automation systems as well as the “credibility of Japanese robots.” 

It is expected that the 2018 purchase order would increase by 16.4% which was equivalent to 1.1 million yen due to the automatic system expansion in China and Internet of Things (IoT) expansion in Japan, Europe, and the United States. The analyst from JARA also forecast the expansion would have led to global growth of more robot procurement and demand for several years.