great piece, may I know where I can check this number "South Korea is a useful warning case: despite world-leading robot density, its robot materials-and-components localization rate remains stuck in the 40 percent range, with Japan and China as major source countries for key inputs like reducers and controllers"? want to compare with china and US
This comes from a recent KITA analysis from January 2026. The report lays out that Korea’s robot materials/components localization rate remains in the 40% range, that precision reducers and controllers are mainly imported from Japan and China, and that Korea depends on China for 88.8% of permanent magnets.
Yes — for China, the best apples-to-apples public figure I’ve found is the USCC estimate that China’s total localization rate for robot components is only about 30%. But there’s a separate and much stronger number people cite: Chinese robot makers reached about 57% domestic market share in China in 2024. Those are different metrics, so they shouldn’t be conflated.
For the U.S., I haven’t found a similarly clean public “localization rate” for robot materials/components. The best public benchmark is IFR: the majority of industrial robots used in the U.S. are imported, mainly from Japan and Europe, and there are few domestic robot manufacturers. So Korea is ~40% on materials/components, China is ~30% on a strict component-localization basis but much stronger on domestic robot production/market share, and the U.S. does not seem to have a comparable widely cited public localization number.
great piece, may I know where I can check this number "South Korea is a useful warning case: despite world-leading robot density, its robot materials-and-components localization rate remains stuck in the 40 percent range, with Japan and China as major source countries for key inputs like reducers and controllers"? want to compare with china and US
This comes from a recent KITA analysis from January 2026. The report lays out that Korea’s robot materials/components localization rate remains in the 40% range, that precision reducers and controllers are mainly imported from Japan and China, and that Korea depends on China for 88.8% of permanent magnets.
https://www.kita.net/researchTrade/report/tradeFocus/tradeFocusDetail.do?no=2926
thanks amazing, do u know what that is for china and US?
Yes — for China, the best apples-to-apples public figure I’ve found is the USCC estimate that China’s total localization rate for robot components is only about 30%. But there’s a separate and much stronger number people cite: Chinese robot makers reached about 57% domestic market share in China in 2024. Those are different metrics, so they shouldn’t be conflated.
For the U.S., I haven’t found a similarly clean public “localization rate” for robot materials/components. The best public benchmark is IFR: the majority of industrial robots used in the U.S. are imported, mainly from Japan and Europe, and there are few domestic robot manufacturers. So Korea is ~40% on materials/components, China is ~30% on a strict component-localization basis but much stronger on domestic robot production/market share, and the U.S. does not seem to have a comparable widely cited public localization number.
https://www.uscc.gov/research/made-china-2025-evaluating-chinas-performance
https://ifr.org/ifr-press-releases/news/robot-installations-in-us-auto-industry-up-10.7