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Robotics systems will be the larger of the two categories throughout the five-year forecast period with worldwide robotics spending forecast to be US$103.4 billion in 2019. Investments in drones will total US$12.3 billion in 2019 but are forecast to grow at a faster rate (30.6% CAGR) than robotics systems (18.9% CAGR).

Robotics spending in 2019 will be dominated by hardware purchases, with nearly two thirds of all spending going toward robotic systems, after-market robotics hardware, and system hardware. Purchases of industrial robots and service robots will deliver nearly 30% of the category total in 2019. Robotics-related software spending will largely go toward purchases of command and control applications and robotics-specific applications. Services spending will be spread across several segments, including systems integration, application management, and hardware deployment and support. Software spending is forecast to grow at a slightly faster rate (21.7% CAGR) than services or hardware spending (19% CAGR and 18.2% CAGR, respectively).

Discrete manufacturing will be responsible for nearly half of all robotics systems spending worldwide in 2019, generating US$50.2 billion in revenues. The next largest industries for robotics systems will be process manufacturing, resource industries, healthcare, and consumers. The industries that will see the fastest growth in robotics spending over the 2017-2022 forecast are wholesale (31.4% CAGR), retail (29.6% CAGR), and construction (28.1% CAGR). By 2022, IDC expects retail will overtake consumer spending on robotics systems.

"Industrial robotics continues to top the technology investment priorities of manufacturing organizations across all major markets surveyed by IDC in 2018," said Jing Bing Zhang, research director, Worldwide Robotics. "While the looming trade war between the US and China is likely to dampen the market growth slightly in the near term, we expect the growth trend to pick up from 2020 onward."

"The worldwide market for commercial service robotics will continue to grow at a rate of 20% per year for the coming five years," said John Santagate, research director for Commercial Service Robotics at IDC. "This growth is due to continued innovation in ease of use as well as the drive for flexible automation across industries. We expect to see growth driven by increased adoption of autonomous mobile robots and collaborative robots being deployed as a means to deliver improvements in capacity, productivity, and efficiency."

Spending on drones will also be dominated by hardware purchases with roughly 90% of the category total going toward drones and after-market drone hardware. Consumer drones will account for roughly 40% of the category total in 2019 with service drones delivering another 18%. Similar to robotics systems, drone software spending will primarily go to command and control applications and drone-specific applications. Services spending will be led by education and training and will see the fastest growth (35.9% CAGR) over the five-year forecast, followed by software (33.9% CAGR) and hardware (30.1% CAGR).

Consumer spending on drones will total US$5.1 billion in 2019, accounting for a little over 40% of the worldwide total. Industry spending on drones in 2019 will be led by utilities (US$1.4 billion), construction (US$1.05 billion) and discrete manufacturing (US$913 million). The industries that will experience the fastest growth in drone spending over the five-year forecast period will be federal/central government (56% CAGR), education (51% CAGR), and retail (42.01% CAGR). By 2022, IDC expects the resource industry to move ahead of both construction and discrete manufacturing to become the second largest industry for drone spending.