Statistics show that in 2002, the annual output of various bearings in China's bearing industry was 2.8 billion sets, including 62.364 million sets of P5 precision bearings and 729000 sets of P4 ultra precision bearings. In the annual sales of bearings, 33 million sets were used in machine tool manufacturing.

By analyzing the market distribution of domestic precision machine tool bearings in 2002, about 1.5 million sets of P5 and above bearings are used in various precision machine tools, of which about half are used for machine tool spindle and ball screw bearings. About 150000 sets of P4 and above ultra precision bearings and matched bearings (mainly spindle bearings and ball screw bearings).

According to the objectives of the Tenth Five Year Plan of the machine tool industry, by 2005, the annual output of metal processing machine tools will reach 200000 ~ 220000, including 30000 ~ 35000 CNC machine tools (the production and sales of CNC machine tools exceeded 30000 in 2003), accounting for 15% of the total output, and the market share of domestic machine tools will reach 60 ~ 65%. Due to the rapid development of China's machine tool industry in recent years, by 2005, the annual output of metal processing machine tools will certainly exceed the "Tenth Five Year Plan" goal of the machine tool industry. In addition, with the development of modern machine tools towards high speed, high efficiency and compounding, the share of precision bearings equipped with precision machine tools will increase significantly. Considering the huge machine tool transformation and maintenance market, through analysis and calculation, it is predicted that in 2005, metal processing machine tools will need more than 50 million sets of supporting bearings, and about 3 million sets of P5 and above precision bearings, of which about 1.5 million sets are used for machine tool spindles and ball screws. Deep groove ball bearings, angular contact ball bearings, cylindrical roller bearings, two-way thrust angular contact ball bearings and tapered roller bearings are widely used.

As precision control parts of machine tools, spindle bearings and ball screw bearings of machine tools, the proportion of P4 and above ultra precision bearings and matched bearings will increase significantly, from 20% in 2002 to about 40% ~ 50% in 2005, with a total of about 700000 sets.

At present, about half of the demand for about 150000 sets of P4 and above ultra precision angular contact ball bearings in the machine tool industry comes from foreign famous bearing companies such as fag, NSK, SKF, snfa and so on. In addition to psychological factors and brand effect, the technical performance and reliability of bearings are the main reasons why machine tool customers choose imported bearings. If the technical index and reliability level of domestic ultra precision bearings can be equivalent to that of imported bearings, the market potential in the next two years will be huge.

Therefore, the major domestic machine tool bearing supporting enterprises have begun to accelerate the pace of technological transformation and increase capital investment in processing conditions, detection means, matching technology and reliability research. The small batch trial products of main models and batch production products of some models have reached the international advanced level. It is only a matter of time and scale to replace imports.