RIM to develop next-generation wireless devices with TPC assistance

High-flying Research in Motion (RIM) has snared a major investment from Technology Partnerships Canada (TPC) for the second time in less than two years to accelerate the pace of R&D on platform technologies supporting the next generation of its hand-held wireless communications products.

TPC will provide $33.9 million of the projected $113 million it will cost to conduct R&D over a three-year period . The agreement covers eight technology areas, including those relating to RF radio frequency, advanced battery technology, miniaturization, power management and digital signal processing.

The TPC investment fits nicely with the boom in wireless technologies and Industry Canada's ambitious e-commerce strategy by increasingly the likelihood of RIM products being used for a wide variety of commercial transactions. Details of the specific technologies and processes covered by the deal are not being disclosed, but TPC officials are confident of seeing a return on its money, given the success of its first investment in 1998.

At that time, TPC invested $5.7 million in advance development of RIM's interactive messaging products. The firm committed to create or maintain 165 jobs at its Waterloo facilities and in fact generated twice as many jobs and patents as originally agreed upon. Many of the 800 jobs the latest project is committed to creating or maintaining will be at RIM's R&D facility in Kanata ON.

RIM has recently enjoyed considerable success with its Blackberry wireless email device and much of the latest R&D project will be building on its technology base.

"TPC is now dealing with a broader base of technologies that are at an earlier stage and more pre-competitive. Our support of RIM goes more to the technologies than the development," says Maureen Lofthouse, TPC's director of enabling technologies. "We want companies to develop to a new level of maturity and help them through a difficult phase."

Since 1995, RIM's employee base has increased from 65 to 550, jumping by 100 in the last four months alone.

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