On the evening of December 26, Till Reuter, the chairman and CEO of the German industrial giant Koca, said at a recent statement that the company is going to be the leader in China's robot market.
KUKA is the world's largest maker of robotics and 80% of the company's revenue came from the automotive robot business in 2009, but the share has dropped to 50% now, mainly because the robotics market for the automotive industry is growing at a rate of only 3% 5%, while the robot market for all other industries has grown by more than 10%.
To this end, KUKA hope that after the acquisition by the Chinese companies, the company can achieve the transformation to expand to other faster growth in the robot market.Microsoft announced in early January this year, has officially completed the acquisition of KUKA, now holds a library Nearly 95% of the shares of the card.
This, says Reut, means that KUKA will tap into small, flexible robots used in electronics manufacturing and logistics warehouses, as well as robots that can help owners charge electric vehicles, and even robots that help older people to live independently.
Reuter said: 'We want to maintain the leading position in the automotive robotics market, but at the same time we also see that other robotics market is growing faster.'
Analysts said that to achieve this diversification strategy in KUKA, the Chinese market is the key. China is the largest and fastest growing automation market in the world. According to the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) data, the sales of robots in the Chinese market account for about the world's sales 1/3 of last year's growth rate of 27%, much higher than 12% in Europe and 8% in the Americas.
To this end, each month, Royce visits the headquarters of Foshan in the United States and maintains close contact with Fang Hongbo, chairman and CEO of the United States, which accounted for 14% of China's robot market last year, ranking the top 3. Reuter said: Our goal is to be the leader in the Chinese market. '
Currently, KUKA's annual revenue in China is 500 million euros (about 588 million U.S. dollars), but Reuter predicts that by 2020 it will exceed 1 billion euros (about 1.176 billion U.S. dollars).
China's industrial robotics is at the core of the ambitious plan of 'Made in China 2025', and the Chinese government has set corresponding goals for increasing the proportion of Chinese-made robots, while Chinese governments are subsidizing robot purchases.
Reutte said: "Now that KUKA has become a member of the American family, Midea is helping us to gain more share in the Chinese market."