One of the world’s largest mobile phone providers is chipping away at the local market, with Huawei putting on workshops to increase its procurement on Australian shores.

The Chinese ICT giant has concluded a small series of workshops in Sydney and Melbourne aimed at upping Australian procurement by 10 per cent this year. Over a hundred possible suppliers turned up to the workshops, which were conducted in partnership with the NSW Trade & Investment and the Victorian Government Department of State Development, Business and Innovation.

Attendees ran the gamut of the Australian tech and ICT industry, including chipset designers, mobile app start-ups, systems integrators, big data analytics, cloud service providers, solar-power companies able to support rural and remote mobile network deployments, augmented-reality developers.

Huawei Australia CTO Peter Rossi, said “Huawei’s total spend on Australian procurement rose from US$36 million in 2010 to over $136 million in 2012, and we’re aiming to grow that by 10% in 2013.”

Huawei is looking to increases both its sales and general reputation in Australia, the company is still barred from taking on National Broadband Network contracts due to Government scepticism about its intentions. However, with major contractors recently walking away from NBN works there has been some speculation that official opinions on Huawei may soon shift.