Xiaomi has announced the opening of a research and development office in Tampere, Finland, which focuses on smartphone camera technologies such as camera algorithms, machine learning, signal processing, image and video processing.

The R&D team is based in Hervanta close to the technology campus of the Tampere University. It is the largest Camera R&D team Xiaomi has established outside of China.

Xiaomi, founded in 2010, develops and builds products with a mission to let everyone in the world enjoy a better life through innovative technologies. This year, it has also become the youngest company on the Fortune Global 500 list.

With the vision of making world-class smartphone cameras, Xiaomi arrived in Tampere during the past summer. The Finnish city has been greatly contributing to the camera and imaging-related innovations of leading smartphone brands since the 1990s, and Tampere University’s technology campus has traditionally been strong in signal processing. In the past decade, this strength in imaging R&D has been adopted at local offices of some global giants, such as Intel and Microsoft. In addition, the local talent pool in-camera technologies is a perfect match for Xiaomi, which seeks to employ highly skilled engineers.

“The setup of this R&D team in Finnish city Tampere is a milestone in our global expansion journey. In this journey, not only do we consolidate ourselves in operations and business, but also work with local talents to further improve our products with highly innovative technologies,” said Wang Xiang, Senior Vice President of Xiaomi, adding that “this move all the more highlights our longstanding commitment of ‘innovation for everyone’.”

“Our Tampere site is Xiaomi’s largest camera team outside of China. We’re focusing on camera technologies such as camera algorithms, machine learning, signal processing, image and video processing – technologies that are driving the R&D of mobile cameras. We are a compact team of around 20 people now, but we are quickly scaling up by building up this team, especially talents specialized in camera algorithm,” said Jarno Nikkanen, Senior Director and Head of Xiaomi Finland R&D.

“Xiaomi’s philosophy has been innovative and highly engaging. It’s all about empowering the teams and individuals to find solutions on their own. What we’re developing in Tampere will end up in the hands of hundreds of millions of users and Mi Fans around the world. That is really motivating,” said Jarno.

Xiaomi joins the rapidly growing Tampere Imaging Ecosystem organized by Business Tampere, the Tampere region economic development agency.

“Business Tampere and the imaging ecosystem have been a great help in setting up the business in Tampere. I have not had experience of making an entry to other countries, but my guess is that our process is among the smoothest ones. For example, we, as part of Xiaomi, are building a state-of-the-art camera lab to facilitate camera algorithms development and have been leveraging the local ecosystem and providers for the lab equipment,” said Jarno.

“We from Business Tampere are also delighted to welcome Xiaomi to the Tampere Imaging Ecosystem. We now have 2 of the top-4 mobile phone manufacturers in the world with R&D sites in Tampere. It proves that our region has one of the top imaging ecosystems in the world,” said Oliver Hussey, Senior Business Advisor at Business Tampere.