Huawei Monday announced a move to set up shop on Nokia’s home turf. The Chinese company says it will invest $90 million over a five-year period to establish a research and development (R&D) center in Helsinki, Finland.
Huawei said the move will add to its existing R&D deployments, which include over 70,000 employees worldwide.
The Finnish R&D center will specifically specialize in mobile devices. Initial projects will focus on software development for smartphones, tablets and rich-media devices, and optimizing the user experience of existing operating systems such as Android and Windows Phone 8.
Huawei, which has traditionally focused more on network equipment, has recently made strides towards becoming a real contender in the smartphone market. The company has released a range of smarpthone models in its home country of China, as well as a few mid- to lower-end models here in the United States.
Huawei said it initially plans to recruit 30 employees for the center, with the goal of hiring more than 100 employees over five years.
In September 2012, Huawei announced a $2 billion investment in R&D, local procurement and center of excellence initiatives in the United Kingdom. Huawei currently employs more than 7,000 people across Europe.
Filed Under: Devices
