Chinese multinational company; a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider; Huawei Technologies has decided to invest 70 million (US$90.6 million) in the smartphone production industry which will span over a five-year period to establish a research and development centre in Helsinki, Finland.
And it is doing that with the aim of its first task being to build software for smartphones and tablets based on Android and Windows Phone 8.
At first, Huawei plans to recruit 30 employees for the centre, with the goal of hiring more than 100 people over five years, the company said in a statement on Monday and initial projects will focus on software development for smartphones, tablets and other types of devices, based on several OS such as Android and Windows Phone 8, Huawei said.
The company has yet to announce its first smartphone based on the latest version of Microsoft’s OS, but is expected to do so soon.
Huawei is currently the world’s fifth largest smartphone vendor in terms of unit sales and currently employs more than 7,000 people across Europe.
Huawei’s long-term plan is to break into the top three and is hoping to take advantage of Nokia’s continuing struggles to make that happen, according to Neil Mawston, executive director at market research company Strategy Analytics.
“Huawei is being a little opportunistic in that it knows there will be a lot of well-qualified Nokia people in the Helsinki area who will be looking for alternative employment,” Mawston said.
The Helsinki R&D centre will join an already established modem and technology design centre in Sweden and a user interface research centre in the U.K.
Huawei has a history of investing in the Nordic countries. Last year the company celebrated the tenth anniversary of its arrival in Sweden, which is the home country of Ericsson, its biggest rival in the mobile network sector.