China's Huawei to add 5,500 jobs in Europe in five years: paper

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese telecommunications equipment maker Huawei plans to create 5,500 jobs in Europe within five years as the company expands its services in the region, state-owned newspaper China Daily said on Saturday.

Huawei, the world's second largest maker of telecoms communication equipment, is to offer information technology solutions to European businesses, Patrick Zhang, president of marketing and solutions at Huawei Enterprise Business Group, told the newspaper.

This business is expected to generate turnover of $1 billion in the next three to five years, he added.

The company is launching its expansion despite the European Commission's allegations of anti-competitive behavior by Huawei and Chinese peer ZTE.

Zhang said Europe offered more growth potential than the United States, where a congressional report last year found the company posed a security threat and essentially blocked it from the market.

"Our expansion progress in Europe is different from that in the U.S., where we have encountered access difficulties due to some groundless reasons given by the American side," Zhang said.

Huawei representatives said last week that the company expected to have its revenues expand by 10 percent annually over the next five years, thanks largely to consumer devices and enterprise services.

Huawei reported revenues of $35 billion in 2012.

(Reporting By Dominique Patton; Editing by Ron Popeski)