Huawei began building its own phone-testing system, xDeviceRobot, in early 2012. The Chinese company hoped to improve the quality of its mobile hardware, which tended to fail far more often than competitors' devices in third-party trials. In May 2012, Huawei China asked T-Mobile if it could license or flat-out buy the company's phone-testing robot, Tappy, which served as a standard for much of the industry. So, Huawei decided to steal Tappy. After installing a handful of employees at T-Mobile's headquarters in Bellevue, Washington, federal prosecutors claim Huawei USA and China employees attempted to illegally collect information on Tappy in a year-long espionage campaign that culminated in actual theft.