Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei Technologies is set to open a new office in Bellevue, Washington, this month and it plans to hire about 100 workers at the location, China Daily reported.
According to William Plummer, vice president of external affairs, the office will become Huawei Technologies North America's research and development office and it plans to hire up to 100 workers by 2017.
Currently, Huawei's North American unit has a small office in Kirkland, Washington. Its North American website and LinkedIn page both said that it had open positions for the Bellevue location, which is about 12 miles east of Seattle.
The report said that Huawei's new office is located at the Plaza Center Bellevue, at the heart of Bellevue's business district. Huawei leased 11,000 square feet on the fifth floor for the office, the report said.
Grant Yerke, a senior vice president at Broderick Group, a Bellevue real estate company, said that although the floor area is enough space for 100 employees, they are giving the company an option to expand.
According to the report, the Greater Seattle area is not only home to Microsoft, T-Mobile and Expedia, as it is the hub for tech companies, but also it has a healthy ecosystem, with the talent pool for tech company development, and the costs are lower compared with Silicon Valley in Northern California.
It was in Seattle that Facebook opened its first engineering office outside of Silicon Valley in 2010. Google's plan to expand its existing Kirkland campus is also seen to boost its presence in the Seattle region.
"I believe Huawei chose the area because it is the center of the development of cloud computing technology," said Zhaohui Tang, CEO of adSage, a Chinese digital advertising technology company with an office in Bellevue.
"A big benefit is that the city is filled with skilled programmers and developers who have expertise in the cloud and all its capabilities," said Bill Liu, president of the Association of Technology and Innovation, an organization that promotes entrepreneurship, technical leadership and exchange between China and the U.S.
"The city is excited Huawei has chosen Bellevue as the site for their new R&D center," said James Henderson, economic development director for Bellevue, in an article on Geekwire.com.
As one of the world's top smartphone makers, Huawei has increased its shipments by nearly 45 percent in 2015. The company is also engaged in some 100 research projects with more than 50 universities in the U.S.
According to the report, more than 70,000 of Huawei's 150,000 global employees are involved in research and development.
Huawei said at CES 2016 that the company expects to surpass Apple in the next two to three years, and then pass Samsung by 2021, to become the world's largest smartphone manufacturer.
Based in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. was established in 1988 by Ren Zhengfei. It is the largest telecommunications equipment maker in the world.