Huawei to open R&D centres in Switzerland

Switzerland is an important location for Huawei, wrote Patrik Müller in an article for the weekend newspaper Schweiz am Wochenende. Müller interviewed Eric Xu, CEO of the Chinese smartphone and telecommunications technology giant, during a working visit by Federal Councillor Doris Leuthard to the Huawei headquarters in Shenzhen.

Huawei currently employs around 350 people in Switzerland at its site in Dübendorf in the canton of Zurich, but this will rise considerably in the future:.“We will employ more people because we will open R&D centres in Zurich and Lausanne,” said Lu.

According to the article, the presence of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology in Zurich and Lausanne was decisive to Huawei’s choice of location. Huawei also requires more employees in Switzerland to “market our services for companies”. In Switzerland, telecommunication providers such as Swisscom and Sunrise use Huawei infrastructure and software products.

Research and development is the key to the success of the global growth plans for the telecommunications giant, said the Huawei CEO. About half of the company’s 18,000 employees worldwide work in this area, and Huawei plans to invest the equivalent of 20 billion Swiss francs on R&D in the coming year. Among other things, Huawei intends to help the 5G standard in mobile communications “achieve a worldwide breakthrough”.