Huawei is looking to bolster its presence in the European market with plans to open a research and development center in Helsinki, Finland, also known as Nokia’s backyard. The Chinese vendor said it plans to invest $90.5 million over the next five years to the project, which will include plans to hire up to 100 employees.
Huawei noted that it currently employs approximately 7,000 people across Europe, including a modem and technology design center in Sweden and a user interface research center in the United Kingdom.
Huawei said the center will be a “key driver” in its R&D efforts surrounding “new technologies for mobile devices,” and somehow managed not to mention Nokia in its press release. The company added that the center will focus on software development for smartphones, tablets and “rich-media devices,” with a focus on optimizing the user experience for Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 8 operating systems.
“We believe the key to building our brand is to provide consumers with a reliable and differentiated user experience,” said Kenneth Fredriksen, VP of Huawei’s Central, Eastern and Nordic Europe operations, in a statement. “The open and innovative environment in Finland is an ideal place for Huawei to strengthen our global R&D capabilities for devices, creating opportunities for both Huawei and the Finnish telecommunications industry.”
Huawei has been in the handset game for some time, but has yet to establish a significant presence in the higher-tier of the market. The company has recently come out with more feature-rich smartphone offerings that have garnered some interest from carriers, but still lags behind more established players in the space like Samsung and Apple.
Nokia, for its part, has done a bit of retrenching over the past several years as the company’s initial reliance on its Symbian OS saw the company fall behind the development curve established by Google and Apple. The company noted earlier this year that it planned to cut 10,000 jobs by the end of next year in an attempt to stem financial losses as it tries to regain ground in the smartphone space through a partnership with Microsoft.
Huawei’s infrastructure division took a hit earlier this year when the U.S. government issued a warning to telecom operators that use of the company’s equipment could prove a security risk. The warning was based on Huawei’s close ties with the Chinese government.
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