Doosan Robotics announced on Dec. 19 that it has signed an agent agreement with China's largest industrial automation solution company, Linkhou, to supply cooperative robots in Suzhou, China.
The deal marks the first step of Doosan Robotics in the Chinese market, which accounts for 36.1 percent of the global industrial robot market, including cooperative robots. Suzhou and Southeast China are the outpost of the “3C (Computer, Communication and Consumer Electronics) Industry” based on Smart Factory.
Linkhou is an industry automation system integration-specialized company that has R&D bases in Silicon Valley in the U.S. and Germany. It has pushed ahead with automatization projects for Apple's factories in China.
Doosan Robotics, which started mass-producing cooperative robots last year, is said to have successfully established a distribution channel by signing a sales contract with auto dealers in Germany in June. It also secured 13 sales networks in eight countries around the world, including China and France.
"The Doosan’s cooperative robots, which have differentiated performance and diverse lineup, will actively target the Chinese market by combining the Linkhou’s know-how in sales, service networks and system integration," said Lee Byung-seo, president of Doosan Robotics.
Meanwhile, the global cooperative robot market, which stands at $1.38 billion this year, is expected to grow sharply to $9.21 billion by 2025, up about 6.7 times from this year, according to the U.S. venture capital research firm Loup Ventures.
