John Walko EE Times Europe (05/25/2009 7:33 AM EST)

LONDON — Chinese communications equipment maker Huawei Technologies is to set up manufacturing facilities in two locations in Hungary, creating about 700 jobs in the process.

According to local reports, one of the production plants will be in Komárom, northern Hungary, and the other in Pecs, in the southern part of the country.

According to Világgazdaság recruitment for the facilities has already started, and Huawei is scheduled to hire 280 staff in 2009 and an additional 420 in 2010.

The company plans to produce $800 million in equipment at the 20,000 square meters of production space this year and $1.1 billion in equipment next year.

The reports do not detail what type of equipment is to be made at the locations, but it is most likely to be wireless infrastructure gear.

According to a recent report form market research company Dell'Oro Group, the Chinese vendor became the third-biggest seller of mobile infrastructure in the world in the first quarter, further expanding its worldwide role on the strength of sales both inside and outside its native China.

Huawei is said to have displaced Alcatel-Lucent to take third spot place behind global leader Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Networks in quarterly revenue.

According to Dell'Oro analysis, Alcatel-Lucent had the fourth biggest sales in the quarter, followed by ailing Nortel Networks.

In the top three, Ericsson had 33 percent of the market, followed by Nokia Siemens at 20 percent and Huawei at 15 percent. A year earlier, Huawei had been ranked fourth, with just 8 percent.

The majority of Huawei's mobile infrastructure sales have been in Europe, where the company grew dramatically in 2008 and counts Vodafone, Telecom Italia and Deutsche Telekom among its customers.