Turk engineers are ‘working like Chinese’

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Huawei has strong ambitions in the Turkish mobile phones market, Sun says.

Turkish engineers are as hard-working as Chinese ones, according to the regional head of Huawei, one of the largest telecom companies in the region, who added that the company was planning $20 million in research and development investments in Turkey every year.

The company invested some $50 million into its software R&D center in Turkey over the last three years, said to Sun Ming, the chief executive of Huawei’s Caucasus and Central Asia operations, on the sidelines of a press meeting on the evening of July 18, where the company unveiled a new smart phone for the Turkey business.

“Turkish engineers are like Chinese people,” Sun said, adding that the company enjoyed finding well-educated professionals to work at their center in Istanbul.

Some 770 people work at the center, Huawei’s second largest R&D facilities outside China. Sun said around 85 percent of the employees there were Turks, and that the total number of engineers working there was 350.

Huawei has been active in Turkey for the last 10 years. It provides network solutions for Turkcell, Vodafone and Avea, the three mobile phone operators in the country, as well as the sole landline operator Türk Telekom.

“We have a very strong capability for networks,” Sun told the Daily News. Turkey is a leading country for telecommunications, particularly in 3G technologies, he said. “We are not only selling our solutions to Turkey but also share our global capability here.”

Turkcell also believes the Chinese R&D people are very hard working.

“These people are crazy,” said Hulusi Acar, a vice general manager at Turkcell, which is promoting
Huwaei’s new Ascend P1 smart phone, at the launching. “They have beds behind their computers and they sleep there.”

The Chinese government is strongly supporting and encouraging the telecommunication industry as the sector speeds up business in the country, Sun said, adding that the good regulations in China backed telecom investments in the country, he said.