Huawei Technologies plans to build an $800 million smartphone manufacturing plant in Sao Paulo state of Brazil over the next three years as part of the strategy to strengthen its presence in Latin America.

The number of smartphone users in Brazil is forecast to reach 89.8 million in 2019, 94.6 million in 2020, 98.4 million in 2021 and 101.6 million in 2022.

Korea’s Samsung Electronics, China’s Lenovo/Motorola and America’s Apple are the top phone suppliers in the overall phone market in Brazil.

Samsung is the largest phone maker in Brazil with 44.93 percent share in July 2019 as compared with 23.4 percent for Motorola, 13.28 percent for Apple, 7.69 percent for LG, 2.77 percent for Xiaomi and 2.55 percent for Asus.

Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria, on a trip to China on Friday, said the company was gearing up to build the plant to meet expected demand following Brazil’s first 5G spectrum auction, scheduled for March 2020.

The new factory is likely to manufacture smartphones. Huawei will consider building a plant in Sao Paulo in the near future depending on the performance of the smartphone operation in the local market, Reuters reported.

Production would be for domestic and foreign markets, according to the Sao Paulo government.

The worldwide consumer business revenue of Huawei reached 220.8 billion yuan or $31.26 billion during the first half of 2019. Huawei’s global smartphone shipments including Honor phones rose 24 percent to reach 118 million units.

Huawei already has one factory producing equipment for telecoms infrastructure in Sao Paulo state, with 2,000 employees.

The new plant, according to Doria will employ 1,000 people.

Huawei, the world’s second-largest smartphone manufacturer, imports handsets from China for the Brazilian market.

Sweden’s Ericsson and Finland’s Nokia also have factories in Sao Paulo state and are racing to lead 5G deployment in Brazil.