Mail.Ru owns Russian social networks Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki. It is developing several messenger services and has an email and browser service.

"Yes, we can confirm the talks," Mail.Ru said without providing details.

Huawei did not reply to a request for immediate comment.

(Reporting by Nadezhda Tsydenova; writing by Tom Balmforth; editing by Jason Neely)