A market analyst firm has sharply cut its growth forecast for mobile robot sales in the logistics sector, saying a sector previously marked by rapid expansion and investment is now undergoing a period of challenges and readjustment, according to Interact Analysis.
According to its recent report, the mobile robot industry is still growing, but not as fast or as smoothly as once expected. That change comes as companies rethink their strategies and timelines in order to cope with tariffs, economic uncertainty, and shifting global dynamics. “In our latest mobile robot market report, published in May 2025, we significantly lowered our forecast, citing a complex mix of geopolitical, economic, and industry-specific challenges, along with changes to our methodology in calculating market sizes,” Interact Analysis said.
Overall, the firm has trimmed its forecast for the sector’s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the next five years from 26% down to 21%.
“At the heart of the forecast revision lies the damaging global tariffs, instigated by the new US administration under President Trump,” Ash Sharma, Interact Analysis’ Chief Commercial Officer and Vice President of Research for Robotics & Warehouse Automation, said in a release. “These tariffs are reshaping global supply chains and injecting a high degree of uncertainty into capital investment decisions, causing delays. Companies are holding back on large-scale automation investments, wary of shifting trade policies and uncertainty over both their own costs and the fiscal health of customers and vendors.”
Additional negative factors include a sluggish recovery in new warehouse construction and a smaller serviceable available market (SAM) than previously estimated for mobile robots. The report included observations on five mobile robot types:
- AGV Conveyors & other material transport robots: Shipment growth reduced from 6% CAGR to 4% between 2025 and 2030 due to weakened economy and automotive growth.
- AMR Conveyors: 15-20% cut in large form factor shipments and slight reduction in smaller form factor shipments due to slower anticipated uptake.
- Automated Forklifts: Slight reduction in shipment CAGR due to the weaker economy.
- Person-to-goods (P2G): We have made a fundamental change to our outlook for P2G robots. Our previous assumption was that more vendors would enter this market to enable volumes to scale. However, the market remains dominated by one vendor (Locus). Its once-closest rival (6 River Systems) has been absorbed into Ocado Intelligent Automation. There are a handful of other vendors active that have won some projects, but not at scale. Despite this, we still predict P2G revenues to grow at an average pace of 30% annually to 2030.
- Shelf-to-person & Tote-to-person: These product types are those most impacted by both the US tariffs and our vendor adjustments, as a large proportion of these segments are served by Chinese vendors. Similarly, the deeper total addressable market (TAM) analysis we have conducted by warehouse throughput more greatly impacts these types of systems, which typically compete with fixed automation and high-density cube storage in mid-throughput sites. At the same time, we have also reduced our expectations for deployments in the rest of APAC and rest of the Americas regions, as we no longer expect costs to drop quickly enough to compete with manual labor in many cases.
