中文原文 : 工業機器人看紅潮來襲
The International Federation of Robotics (IFR) and Chinese Robot Industry Association (CRIA) jointly released data showing that in 2014 total sales of industrial robots worldwide counts for approx. 250,000 units, among which 57,000 units are sold in China. Therefore, China ranks on top in the world in terms of amounts. However, only less than 30 percent of these 57,000 units are native products while the four leading companies in the field of industrial robots, KUKA (Germany), ABB (Germany), Yaskawa (Japan) and Fanuc (Japan) have more than 50 percent of the market share in China, indicating that China remains over-reliant on imports of the roboters and its key components such as servomotor, controller and reducer.
In recent years, the amount of patent applications in China has been growing rapidly, which can be observed also for the industrial robot technology. According to the figures above, the amount of patent applications in the three developed countries, the United States, Japan and Germany, has been decreasing at the same time. It refers partly to the fact that the Chinese market for industrial robots continues to develop flourishly. As a result, more patent applications concerning robotics have been filed in China instead of the other countries.
The analysis of the patent filing activities of the four giants in China leads to the conclusion that all the four global players submitted more patent applications year by year. The four giants even take a further step to relocate their focus of the robotics business to China in addition to the ongoing localization strategy:
In 2003, FANUC set up branches in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin, Wuhan, Dalian, Taiyuan and other places;
in 2004, KUKA established KUKA Flexible Manufacturing Systems (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. in Shanghai;
in 2005, ABB relocated its global robotics business headquarters to Shanghai; and
in 2010, Yaskawa began to produce servo motors in Shenyang.
The localization strategy of the multinational corporations includes the patent filing in the local market, which explains why a significant amount of patent applications in China is related with those foreign companies in light of the strengthened tendency of patent filing activities. It can be foreseen in the future the Chinese companies would face the restrictions of the “patent fortress” build by the multinational corporations while bringing their products to the local market.
Surrounded by the foreign competitors, how can Chinese companies tackle the said obstacle in the local market?
A way-out can be illustrated with the example below. The global market for reducer is shared by the three Japanese companies, Nabtesco, Sumitomo Heavy Industries (SHI), and Harmonic Drive Systems (HDS), due to the barriers to entry.
In the patent analysis we discovered a Chinese company, Suzhou Science and Technology Co., Ltd, which specializes at harmonic drives and silently developed a clever strategy combined with three subsequent steps to create the competitive advantage:
- Technology breakthrough with researches: to develop new harmonic meshing tooth “P-type teeth”;
- Patent filing: to protect the technical know-how with patents from 2010;
- Standards establishment: to join the preparation of GB / T 30819-2014 “robot with harmonic gear reducer” as national standard.
We will continue to observe the development of Chinese enterprises in the field of industrial robots and share with our readers how China’s enterprises overcome difficulties with their IP strategies. For more information, please contact us!