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Apple Looking to Recruit BlackBerry Employees in Ontario

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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Following the announcement of BlackBerry's layoffs that will see a loss of 40 percent of its staff, Apple has begun poaching BlackBerry talent via a recruitment drive near the BlackBerry offices in Ontario, reports the Financial Post.
In the Cambridge Hotel and Conference Centre on Sept. 26, located in Cambridge, Ont. on the outskirts of the Kitchener-Waterloo region where BlackBerry was born, the iPhone maker invited local talent with the aim of luring them to their Silicon Valley operations.
Click to expand...
According to a LinkedIn invitation, the majority of positions open at Apple are located within Cupertino, California. Apple has said that it will provide both relocation and immigration assistance to any candidates that are hired, but it is unclear exactly what positions Apple is looking to fill.

Apple's attempt to snap up BlackBerry employees comes as the company itself contemplates a $4.7 billion takeover bid from Fairfax Financial, which BlackBerry initially received on September 23.

Amid worries that Fairfax Financial cannot come up with the full funding, BlackBerry is also reported to be considering a breakup of the company, as other companies like Cisco and Samsung have expressed interest in only parts of the company. Piecemeal elements, such as patents or its enterprise network, could be more valuable than a standard sale.

At the current time, BlackBerry continues to seek out the best option for the eventual sale of the company. BlackBerry has until November 4 to receive other proposals as Fairfax Financial works to get financing to solidify the deal.

During its ongoing financial troubles, BlackBerry has released a new cloud service designed for managing mobile devices and is also set to launch the iOS and Android versions of BlackBerry Messenger in the future. The company previously prepared the release for September 22, but had its servers overwhelmed by an unauthorized Android version of the app which has since delayed the launch.

Article Link: Apple Looking to Recruit BlackBerry Employees in Ontario
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2013/10/10/apple-looking-to-recruit-blackberry-employees-in-ontario/
rdowns

rdowns

macrumors Penryn
Jul 11, 2003
27,397
12,521
Smart move Apple. BB employees are pretty much their best assets.
 
aristotle

aristotle

macrumors 68000
Mar 13, 2007
1,768
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Canada
iChrist said:
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This is precisely the bozo parade that Steve Jobs warned us about.

:mad:
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Some of their engineers are smart people. The real bozos there were in upper level management. The top bozos were the two co-CEOs.

As long as Apple does not hire away any of their executives they should be ok.
 
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dugbug

dugbug

macrumors 68000
Aug 23, 2008
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Somewhere in Florida
I would imagine enterprise stuff would be of interest to apple.

I question their patent pool as I would imagine bby would have already used them to some benefit already. Kind of like motorola IMHO.
 
keysofanxiety

keysofanxiety

macrumors G3
Nov 23, 2011
9,539
25,302
iChrist said:
.
This is precisely the bozo parade that Steve Jobs warned us about.

:mad:
Click to expand...

It's difficult to appreciate the position Apple was during the '90s. As others have said, it was the CEOs who had BB on the wrong path. Steve would have always looked for good people in bad places; you won't believe how much potential can be wasted by bad leadership. If anything, Steve's return to Apple in '97 should show you just how wrong this mentality is.
 
B

brownpaw

macrumors regular
Apr 18, 2010
185
153
I feel like I've been reading about the coming BBM app for iOS/Android for like two years now. How long does it honestly take? Jesus. No wonder Blackberry is failing.
 
F

FlatlinerG

Cancelled
Dec 21, 2011
711
5
What's with all this hate for those beer choices? Keiths is delicious! There might be some "hip local brands" on the west coast, but good luck finding anyone who drinks anything other than Keiths, Olands, Moosehead, or Canadian on the east coast. :D

and I may or may not have a Moosehead tattoo on my leg..:p



On topic:

Pretty solid move. There would be a ton of unemployed talent coming from the area.
 
iChrist

iChrist

macrumors 65816
Sep 7, 2011
1,479
432
3 countries for tax benefit
aristotle said:
Some of their engineers are smart people. The real bozos there were in upper level management. The top bozos were the two co-CEOs.

As long as Apple does not hire away any of their executives they should be ok.
Click to expand...


Really, there are Blackberry phones that exhibit good engineering? Every time I touch one, I feel like I just time-warped back in time 10 years.

:rolleyes:
 
Sky Blue

Sky Blue

Guest
Jan 8, 2005
6,856
11
Good, hope talented employees find a new position quickly, shouldn't have to suffer for BlackBerry's mistakes.
 
aristotle

aristotle

macrumors 68000
Mar 13, 2007
1,768
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iChrist said:
Really, there are Blackberry phones that exhibit good engineering? Every time I touch one, I feel like I just time-warped back in time 10 years.

:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
So I assume that you don't work for a major publicly traded corporation then?

When you work for a large organization your hands are tied by what management wants to do. The management at RIM could not see the forest for the trees and insisted on trying to milk their BES ecosystem for all they could before they even considered looking at a replacement for their Operating System. BB 10 was too little too late and had they moved two years earlier, they might have had a fighting chance.

It is hard to make bricks without straw.

As for their build quality, I understand that began to deteriorate even further as they switched OEMs in an effort to cut costs.
 
A

avanpelt

macrumors 68030
Jun 2, 2010
2,956
3,877
Makes sense for Apple to make a talent acquisition as soon as possible before those remaining talented folks are lured away by someone else.
 
ValSalva

ValSalva

macrumors 68040
Jun 26, 2009
3,783
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Burpelson AFB
The vultures are circling ;) Better get the good meat before the carcass is all bones.

But seriously, one would think that the employees still at BB are going to be the most valuable. Seems like a good plan to get some of them before they go to Facebook, Google, or Samsung.
 
melgross

melgross

macrumors 6502
Jan 23, 2004
446
394
New York City
The last part of this story isn't exactly correct. Blackberry has been shopping themselves around to a number of companies that Blackberry thinks could be interested. These other companies haven't expressed interest on their own.

The concept that Cisco and some others may be interested in parts of the company are purely speculative on the parts of those who have been writing articles on this development. As far as I know, so far none of these companies have responded positively to any of this publicly. Nor has there been any reliable reports of them doing so privately.

Nevertheless, Blackberry's stock has again been rising on all of this speculation. I'm wondering if it isn't a ruse on the part of Blackberry, and possibly Fairfax, with the stock price rise a hopefully result. I'm suspicious of everything happening around Blackberry. And Watsa right now, is not to be trusted, as he has lost literally billions on his failed investment in RIM over the years, and is desperate to get some of it back.
 
Tankmaze

Tankmaze

macrumors 68000
Mar 7, 2012
1,707
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iChrist said:
Really, there are Blackberry phones that exhibit good engineering? Every time I touch one, I feel like I just time-warped back in time 10 years.

:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Meh, blackberry phones were sucks, I agree with that.

but read this http://www.theglobeandmail.com/repo...of-why-blackberry-is-failing/article14563602/

to highlight from the articles :
they actually manage to create a fast BB 10 OS and a very responsive system that can compete with android and iOS. but the top brass wanted legacy support which was the OS 7 apps support and can't decide whether to drop the keyboard and go touchscreen all the way or release 2 phones with keyboard & touchscreen because they don't want to make another touchscreen phone.

the executives were divided.in the end, they were too late to release the phone with the delays, losing their COO that made the team lost their spirit , and on top of that they wanted to add lots of legacy support to a NEW OS hence bloated phone. that's just really bad direction imo.
 
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