This should help France’s budget situation a (little) bit. Two weeks after announcing that it would scale up its activities in France with a new R&D center by 2016, Huawei’s president presented to Prime Minister Manuel Valls a 1.5 billion euro investment over 3-years in the French market, focusing on its smartphone business.
Huawei’s strategy in France, extends beyond just focusing on the French consumer market, to establishing deeper relationships with France’s burgeoning PMEs and startups. In addition, Huawei is looking to build upon its track record of building sound relationships with Europe-based suppliers such as France’s ST micro, and increase the number of its European suppliers it works with overall. With expanding activities in France, including now 4 R&D centers, they’ll have a firm on-the-ground presence to build these relationships.
Huawei anticipates that their investments will result in the creation of 2k indirect jobs and 650 direct jobs (new Huawei employees). Given their breakneck growth (i.e. nearly doubling their worldwide sales in only a year to 20.3 million units), they definitely have the means to make their investment plans a reality. Definitely the type of partner France wants and needs given the current economic client and its increasing focus on tech as a path to growth. However, France is just one piece (albeit a key one) of Huawei’s European strategy. They expect to build upon their, already, 5.2 billion in sales via a 13k strong European presence by 2017.