Huawei To Invest £10m In High Street ‘Experience Stores’

Huawei has announced it is spending £10 million with the opening of three stores in both London and Manchester.

These three ‘experience’ stores and customer service centres will allow the Chinese tech giant to create its first own-brand stores on the UK’s High Street, and will create up to 100 jobs.

The first store will open in London’s Olympic Park, Stratford, in October 2020, and will be followed by a dedicated retail space and service centre in Manchester, slated to open in February 2021.

Experience stores

Huawei will also create an additional experience store in London in early 2021, in addition to the existing Huawei Service Centre in Wembley, London, that opened in June this year.

We are excited to be making this strong commitment to the UK, and to be coming to the High Street to deliver our innovative new devices and experiences direct to the millions of people who own and love our products,” explained Anson Zhang, MD of Huawei’s UK Consumer Business Group.

“The opening of our new Huawei Experience Stores and Service Centres follows the strong growth of our UK consumer business in recent years, and shows the confidence we have in our future here,” said Zhang. “We know that millions of people here in the UK love our products and we’re delighted we will now have these new high street spaces where we can interact with our owners in a more personal way”.

The idea is these new ‘Huawei Experience Stores’ will allow consumers to interact with a range of Huawei products including smartphones, laptops, tablets, headphones, earbuds, smartwatches, fitness bands, speakers, home innovations etc.

Huawei has opened similar stores in Madrid in July 2019, Barcelona in February 2020, Paris in March 2020.

The stores will also provide Huawei users with product training and technical support as well as a personalised consultation service, to troubleshoot any product queries.

Huawei UK

The decision by Huawei to try and connect to the British consumer, comes after the tech giant was this week excluded from providing Huawei equipment in 5G networks from 2027.

Following that rejection, there were question marks over the future of the company in the UK, but this development shows Huawei intends to stay and compete in the UK despite the government decision.

There is no word over whether Hauwei will still press ahead and spend £1 billion building a research facility in Cambridgeshire, that will “focus on researching, developing, and manufacturing optoelectronics products.”

Huawei acquired 500 acres of land in Cambridge in 2018, and the site is located at the former Spicers paper mill and production facility located to the west of the large village of Sawston.

Last month Huawei touted its commitment to the UK, as it marked 20 years of presence in the British market.