“According to the Japan Robot Association (JARA), the number of industrial robots sold during the period from April to June of this year was down by 5.8% over the same period of 2011, coming to around 116.5 billion yen. This indicates a drop for the third consecutive quarter.

Of this, sales of robots for use in welding came to around 23.3 billion yen, down by 1.2%. Sales of robots for use in clean rooms of semiconductor and FPD manufacturing plants were down by 41.9%, coming to around 9.09 billion yen due to a sluggish demand.”