Chinese Smartphone Giant Vivo Is Latest to Splurge on Tech Tower
China’s No. 2 smartphone company Vivo Mobile Communications Co. has broken ground at a high-rise building in Shenzhen to house its potential headquarters, reflecting the boom in the country’s booming technology market. Scheduled for completion in 2025, the 32-story gadget manufacturer will house 5,800 employees. It was planned by NBBJ, the designers behind Samsung’s Silicon Valley facility and Seattle’s Amazon Spheres.
The new building will feature Vivo’s flagship store, indoor gardens on all floors, and also a spiral exterior with self-shaped glass, according to the architectural firm.
Vivo joins with Tencent Holdings Ltd. and ByteDance Ltd. in investing a great deal on new office space. A lot of it in the booming technology hub of Shenzhen. It will contribute to the mega-building boom at a time when economic uncertainty is causing many companies to cut back. WeChat developer Tencent is constructing an adjacent campus roughly the size of Midtown Manhattan on reclaimed land in Qianhai Bay. It costs the company $1.2 billion.
Cost for New Buildings:
Vivo paid 1.3 billion yuan ($182 million) for the location of its new headquarters. ByteDance, owner of TikTok, recently invested 1.1 billion yuan on the property in the city’s downtown district. It is according to the local land authorities. Also Kuaishou, a YouTube-like video network backed by Tencent, is investing 3 billion yuan based on its fledgeling e-commerce business in Chengdu, complete with live-streaming studios for hawking products.
Some economists claim that building booms signify an overheated economy that precedes a crash. Yet NBBJ, which also built campuses for Google’s Alphabet Inc. and Ant Group’s associated Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., claims that China’s tech giants have outgrown their old digs. They are now merely finding space to lead a possible wave of future global expansion. Vivo, which began life during Android’s growth ten years ago, has gradually developed into a pioneer at home and throughout Asia and Europe. Alongside compadres Huawei Technologies Co. and Xiaomi Corp. The production encapsulates the way Chinese names have started to wave abroad.
“What we’ve seen right now is part of the natural life cycle of these businesses, where they’ve outgrown their current facilities and need new ones to operationally sustain their increasing global scope,” said NBBJ partner Robert Mankin, who is responsible for the Vivo project. “It’s very uncommon for businesses in the U.S. to build their headquarters building, and you still see it in Asia.”
Tencent Growth Plans:
The tech sector boom fits with China’s trillion-dollar initiative to boost the economy and lay the groundwork for networking and data centering for next-generation Internet technology. As far as offices are concerned, Tencent has among its peers the most ambitious growth plans. Dubbed Net City, the latest initiative involves solar panels, automated sensor arrays, flood control mangroves and also a pedestrian-friendly transit system. This will take about seven years to finish.
According to the local government, Tencent currently has 38,000 employees in Shenzhen. Also with headcount projected to more than double in seven years. ByteDance said it plans to create 40,000 new job opportunities this year. They also leased new offices in Hong Kong and purchased a Beijing shopping plaza to turn it into a workspace. Oppo, the cross-town competitor of Vivo, is also building new HQ in Shenzhen. The building, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, will include a 20-story architectural lobby, an art gallery, restaurants and also shops. The building is scheduled to be completed by 2025.
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