Research In Motion, the company known for its BlackBerry smartphones, has set up its only quality control center outside of North America, in the heart of the Ruhr valley, where the devices are being put through their paces with such things as extreme temperature tests. In special chambers they are exposed to temperatures ranging from -40° Celsius to +80° Celsius. And this is just one of the many extreme tests to which the smartphones are subjected. “The device lives out its whole life here in just two hours,” explains Thorsten Heins, RIM’s Senior Vice President. And he adds: “In this way we can draw conclusions about the materials, the design and many other things, and thus constantly improve the quality.”
There are 250 engineers currently working at the Research In Motion research and development facility in Bochum, which was founded in 2008. RIM aims to increase its capacity: in a couple of years there should be 500 people engaged in research and development for new mobile handsets. The Canadians are giving the city on the Ruhr some strong backing. They have already invested more than 60 million dollars here since 2008, plus another 20 million in each additional year. In record time the German engineers developed the first “BlackBerry engineered in Germany” which was formally presented five months ago. To mark the occasion RIM CEO Mike Lazaridis came to Bochum, where he handed one of the first BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphones to Bundestag President Norbert Lammert.
Why has the leader in Canada’s telecommunications industry built its European quality control center in Bochum of all places? Lazaridis never tires of saying: “The main reason is the people here. We need talent, and Germany has plenty to offer.” He values Germany’s higher education system, especially in the engineering sciences. “We want to be part of that.” That’s a good enough reason for the BlackBerry company to develop its new facility on two floors of an unspectacular building at Bochum’s Ruhr University.
RIM made hay while the sun shone. In 2008 Nokia closed down its operations in Bochum. 2,300 people, including 400 engineers and technicians, lost their jobs. But RIM trusted in their expertise, which is now benefiting BlackBerry: 120 former Nokia employees are working for the Canadian company. The first “Bochumberry”, as the RIM boss almost lovingly dubbed the BlackBerry that was developed in the former mining town, displays an “astonishing amount of German engineering expertise”, he says. And there’s more to come. Of this, the experts are certain.
According to Gartner global research analysts, one fifth of all the smartphones sold worldwide in 2009 were RIM products. That means the Canadians are still outstripping competitors, such as Apple with its iPhone or cell phones with a Google operating system. Lazaridis is convinced: “The researchers and developers at Bochum will be playing a key role, and they’ll be helping RIM to carry on scoring with quality in the smartphone market.”
