ZTE is reportedly taking its pick from dozens of BlackBerry and Motorola employees in order to build new hardware such as smartphones, and just to be clear, we’re talking about former staff and not those currently working for either of these two companies. At present, the Chinese OEM has brought on board less than 20 BlackBerry members who used to hold positions as senior engineers.
The newly hired former BlackBerry employees are currently still working in Canada, though they may be required to take on more responsibility and move to the US or China later on. CrackBerry cites a Wall Street Journal post which says that ZTE may be looking to poach more talented folks from the aforesaid company in the near future.
ZTE is hoping to introduce products with more security and better designs with input from its fresh troop of BlackBerry and Motorola veterans. Never mind its sunk smartphone business, the Canadian smartphone company has always been strong on security and its services are being used by the Pentagon and NATO, as well as other big names including Tokheim.
The rise of connected devices and services means security is an issue ballooning to massive proportions. If ZTE can launch phones and other gadgets with a secure platform baked in, it could face a bright future. The company claims to have shipped 40 million handsets in 2013, it may manage to touch 60 million this year and it hopes to increase that figure to 80 million by 2015.
Considering its growing business, it won’t just be ex-employees from BlackBerry and Motorola who ZTE will be shopping for, we assume.