Factories worldwide had about five million industrial robots in operation in 2025, according to the International Federation of Robotics. Its September 24 release reports a 9 percent increase in the operating stock and more than 600,000 installations during the year.
The growth was uneven. China accounted for 59 percent of new installations, while the United States moved ahead of Japan to become the second-largest annual market. These figures describe industrial robots across factories, not a count of humanoid machines.
IFR expects further growth, but its projections remain forecasts. The distinction between operating stock and annual installations also matters: one measures the accumulated fleet, while the other measures new equipment added during a particular year.
A workforce issue beyond the purchase order
The size of the installed base makes day-to-day performance an important part of the automation story. A robot purchase starts a continuing requirement for programming, maintenance, process improvement and coordination with people working around the cell.
For a company evaluating its next investment, an operating plan should sit beside the capital proposal. Who owns fault recovery? Who can update a process when the product changes? Which employees can tell the difference between a mechanical issue, a software issue and an upstream quality problem?
These capabilities deserve explicit training time and budget. Counting machines is useful for understanding the market, but a local project should be judged by its own production results: consistent output, quality, recovery time and safe operation. A larger industry does not remove the need to prove the value of an individual installation.