Turkey has become an important market and a regional base for Chinese company Huawei and hosts the company’s second largest research and development centre, Deutsche Welle Turkish reported on Thursday.

Huawei is recently at the centre of an international trade dispute between United States and China. Following a breakdown in trade talks between the two countries, the U.S. government this month put Huawei on an "Entities List," which bans U.S. firms from sharing technology and software with the Chinese firm. Google has stopped providing updates of its Android software to Huawei, as a result of the ban.

Meanwhile, Huawei has become the second best-selling smart phone brand in Turkey, increasing its market share to 30 percent from 3 percent in two years, DW said.

The Chinese company’s Turkey director said this month that they expected Huawei’s market share in the country to rise to 35 percent.

Ediz Akın, the owner of Turkish retail company Istanbul Bilişim, told DW that Turkish consumers had started to prefer the Chinese brand, as a result of ongoing tensions between Turkey and the United States.

Huawei in 2009 opened its second-largest technology centre in Turkey, which provides services to mobile phone operators in 30 countries, DW said.

“Huawei invested a lot in Turkey and keeps on investing. Turkey serves as a centre for both Eastern Europe and Middle East and North Africa markets,” said Özgür Çetin, the editor in chief of the technology website teknolojioku.com.