Huawei's Rapid Growth, Alleged Theft Helped Sow Mistrust in U.S.

  • ‘Tappy’ the phone-testing robot a flashpoint in litigation
  • Executive’s arrest follows long trail of allegations in U.S.
Photographer: Krisztian Bocsi/Bloomberg
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Huawei Technologies Co. wanted a better way to test its telephone handsets, so it sent an engineer to see “Tappy,” the robot in partner company T-Mobile US Inc.’s laboratory in Bellevue, Washington.

“Tappy,” computer-driven and tireless, taps on touch screens, simulating weeks of use in a day. The Huawei engineer was curious about Tappy’s fingertips. So he slipped one into a laptop bag and left with it, in an act T-Mobile branded theft.