Chinese tech firms Huawei and Rekoo to invest in UK

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/oct/16/chinese-tech-firms-huawei-rekoo-invest-uk-london

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Chinese telecoms equipment firm Huawei and the country's largest social gaming company Rekoo have pledged to create hundreds of technology engineering jobs in the UK.

Huawei is to build a $200m (£125m) research and development facility in Britain, with engineers working on smartphone design, software and broadband technologies. The location has yet to be announced, but the centre will boost Huawei's British engineering headcount to 300 by 2017.

Rekoo, which attracts 15 million daily gamers on personal computers and 10 million on smartphones, will become the first high-profile Chinese company to open an outpost in London's Tech City development.

Lisa Pan, vice-president of Rekoo, said the London office would allow the company to be the bridge between mobile gaming markets in China and Europe. "Companies in the UK produce very high quality games," said Pan, "and being in London means we can attract world-class talent and find new business opportunities with UK and European developers."

Rekoo already has ties with western digital businesses, having published and developed games in China for Zynga, Disney and Facebook. Pan said Rekoo will use its London office to export more European games to China, with contracts signed in the UK benefiting from the protection of local laws. Rekoo's revenue runs into the tens of millions of dollars, and 60% of its earnings are from mobile phone games.

The announcements followed a visit to Huawei's Shenzhen headquarters by George Osborne. The chancellor has been accompanied on his trade mission to China by British technology entrepreneurs such as Lee Cameron, the deputy chief executive of mobile banking group Monitise, and software billionaire Mike Lynch.

Lynch runs the technology investment group Invoke Capital. He also founded corporate search software group Autonomy, which was sold to Hewlett-Packard for £7bn, and whose book-keeping is currently being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office.

"I am delighted to be introducing some of China's tech giants in Shenzhen to some of Britain's leading tech entrepreneurs," said Osborne. "Huawei and Rekoo's investment into the UK is a great testament to Britain's tech industry and I am here to make sure that relationship goes from strength to strength."

The R&D centre is the first initiative to be announced under the $2bn (£1.2bn) UK investment programme pledged by Huawei last September.

Huawei already has a team of 80 engineers working on photonics research after acquiring the Centre for Integrated Photonics in Ipswich last year from the East of England Development Agency. The centre specialises in the use of light to transmit high volumes of data, particularly over fibre optic wires.

Its founder and chief executive, Ren Zhengfei, was received in Downing Street by David Cameron last year amid a political backlash against the company in the US, where questions were raised over whether equipment from the Chinese manufacturer should be used in sensitive telecoms infrastructure.

"The UK is home to some of the best hi-tech professionals in the world," said Ren. "Combined with a free-trade economy, this makes it a very good investment environment for Huawei."

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