Turkey to continue to support Huawei's R&D center in Istanbul: minister

ISTANBUL - Turkish Industry and Technology Minister Mustafa Varank said that his country will continue to support Huawei's R&D center in its largest city Istanbul, said a press release on Monday.

Varank made the remarks when visiting the center, saying "Huawei is one of the most important global companies investing in R&D in Turkey."

"Its engineers do not only produce solutions for the domestic market in Turkey, but also export them abroad," he added.

Li Jing, general manager of Huawei Turkey, briefed Varank on some new products, such as the Petal Maps, which help users find the best route to the destination with real-time traffic information, and the artificial intelligence-powered application WeSight, which is developed for health and safety at workplaces.

The Talent Interview, an online recruitment platform, a real estate application that included virtual reality, and an end-to-end test automation tool called Supreme Test, also attracted the visitors' attention.

While getting information about Huawei's smart transportation project implemented by a local business partner for Konya Metropolitan Municipality, Varank made a phone call with Konya Mayor Ugur Ibrahim Altay, inquiring about the benefits of the project.

The mayor said the design was implemented in eight junction points of the city's tram line. Thanks to its smart signalization feature, the average duration of the journey were reduced from 59 to 42 minutes.

"After more than 11 years of continuous investment, with more than ￥184 million, today, our R&D center has grown into the second-largest R&D center of Huawei outside China," Li Jing stressed.

The general manager also noted that the company has so far trained more than 5,000 talents for the Turkish information and communications technology (ICT) ecosystem.

Additionally, Huawei has launched a cloud computing service in Turkey "to provide local enterprises with a stable, reliable, secure, and sustainable cloud platform."

"With self-developed high-performance IT and network equipment, Huawei Cloud will provide low latency and cost-effective cloud services for customers in Turkey," Li said.

According to the press reports, the Huawei R&D center has carried out 15 TUBITAK projects so far.

Huawei Turkey, which launched operations in Turkey in 2002, will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year with a series of events to further support the development of the local ICT ecosystem.

Varank's visit was also accompanied by Hasan Mandal, president of the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK).