Motorola plans hiring spree in BlackBerry's hometown
Unless BlackBerry bosses embark on some wild scorched earth policy as they retreat from the smartphone business, their hometown of Waterloo, Ontario, should prove to be fertile ground for other mobile companies looking to expand. Motorola could become one of the first to capitalize on the situation, having just opened a small office in Kitchener-Waterloo, where its parent company Google has already had an R&D base since 2006. Speaking to the Financial Post, Motorola Canada's engineering director, Derek Phillips, said he has "big plans" for the area and is "optimistic" about finding the right mobile tech talent. He stopped short of saying he wants BB workers specifically, instead pointing to other sources of brainpower like the University of Waterloo (which happens to be the home of the Lazaridis-backed Quantum-Nano Centre). For the sake of the 4,500 people recently left unemployed due to BlackBerry's strategic failures, however, we hope he was just being diplomatic.
