Huawei is doing the opposite of what other mobile companies are doing, investing in the West for production. Others like Nokia have over the years shifted most of their operations in the East for cost reduction in labour and manufacturing, Huawei is a Chinese company and is moving West. Well, not really for hardware production, but research and development. And in Nokia’s backyard. Huawei has announced a plan to invest 70 million EURO for a 5 year period to be spent in setting up a Research and Development centre in Helsinki, Finland.
What do they want to do there?
This Chinese telecoms giant wants to focus on software development for Smartphones and rich-media devices, optimizing User experience for existing operating systems they manufacture on like Android and Windows phone 8. Initially, Huawei will hire 30 employees with a plan to increase this to over 100 in the 5 year period. Huawei notes that it has grown quite significantly in Europe mostly due to the region’s economy and foreign investment initiatives. Looks like this could be a knee jerk reaction to the hurdles they are experiencing in the US market with trust issues.
This R&D centre, once established, will serve as Huawei’s core centres for device R&D.
