In another sign that Huawei is continuing its march into the U.S. smartphone market, reports are out that the Chinese company is preparing to open a new engineering facility in Seattle to conduct research and development activities. Although the company is just reaching the point where they can open their own facility, Huawei already has about 40 employees working in the Seattle area and LinkedIn has several job openings listed. The new Huawei R&D center is expected to employee around 100 when fully operational in 2017.
Huawei will be joining companies like Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and Uber with a base of operations in the Seattle area. Sources think Huawei may be particularly interested in collaborating with Microsoft and Amazon, especially if they have employees in such close proximity to each other. Huawei just announced a new Windows 10 tablet at MWC 2016. In the future, they may look to Amazon for insight on global supply chain management.
Huawei's CEO Richard Yu expects the company to continue to grow with a 30% increase in smartphone shipments during 2016. Huawei has already jumped into the top five in the global smartphone market and has their eyes on both Apple and Samsung in the next 2 to 5 years. Much of the past growth they experienced was done without benefit of a presence in the U.S. market. However, during 2015 they did manage to secure a partnership with Google to produce the Nexus 6P, a device that was well received in the market.
source: Bidness Etc
