Huawei invests in research and design in France

The huge Chinese telecommunications company has made the nation a large part of its European and global strategy

The French flair for style and expertise in research and development are finding their way into the global products and services of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei, which is investing large sums and creating jobs in France.

According to Song Kai, general director of Huawei France, the country plays an important role in Huawei's European ecosystem. Song spoke to China Daily in Paris recently.

"The opening of our R&D centers marks a further step in Huawei's European strategy, which places a key focus on R&D investment," Song says.

The company has established four research and development centers in France, including a chipset design and embedded electronics research center in southern France, a mathematics center, and the company's first global aesthetics research center in Paris.

Huawei CEO and founder Ren Zhengfei announced a plan last year to invest $1.9 billion in France by 2018. Ren had earlier announced plans to recruit 170 researchers in France by 2017.

Huawei has been present in France since 2003. About four years ago, the company started to tap into the smartphone industry in France, and now has more than 30 percent growth in that sector annually.

"Our R&D site represents perfectly what France can provide in terms of skills in the global IT market," Song said at the opening of the European R&D site in Sophia Antipolis, a technology park in southern France. "This inauguration is a symbolic step for Huawei in France, a sign of its increasing collaboration with the French digital ecosystem. Huawei has great ambitions for the coming months and Sophia Antipolis is only the first step in its French R&D development strategy."

The chipset design center in Sophia Antipolis is mainly in charge of improving Huawei smartphones' image processing quality and ability, while the mathematics center aims to make a breakthrough in fifth-generation network technology, and solve the bottleneck problem of Internet data connection.

"Our Paris aesthetics research center helps us to design our products to be more appealing, to boost our sales," Song says.

Since fashion design and mathematics are strong points of France, the Chinese company built R&D centers there aiming to take advantage of those strong points.

"We had a pink P6 smartphone, but it didn't sell well," he says. "But after it was redesigned by our Paris aesthetics research center, it become popular on our P7 and P8 models."

The center brings creative ideas in color and style to Huawei products, integrating innovative technologies with aesthetics, he adds. The center contributed in the design of Huawei's first group of wearable gear, the Huawei Watch W1 and TalkBand B2, which were unveiled at the Mobile World Congress 2015.

The Paris aesthetics center is staffed by 10 designers specializing in luxury design, fashion, automotive, 3D, digital and brand strategy. Mathieu Lehanneur, a noted French designer, is the chief designer of the center.

The company's mobile phone sales reached 75 million units 2014, and 100 million units globally in 2015, Song says. The French-designed watch has also received a good reception from consumers, he says, although it is priced at around 399 euros ($431), which puts it within the premium market.