model we used when we opened an office in Montreal about 10 years ago. So we start the office relatively small, with a little more than a dozen employees, maybe a dozen, and we try to focus them in one or two areas.”
At least initially, Merritt says InterDigital’s San Diego lab “is very focused on the compression technologies that we’re developing as part of a suite of technologies that will address the ever-growing bandwidth crunch that operators have.”
At InterDigital’s Montreal office, Merritt says the company was able to expand over time, largely by hiring key employees from Ericsson and Nortel. “We are much more focused on getting the right person who can really drive some of this critical research that we’re doing, than just hiring a big army of folks, just to implement a product design. That’s not what we do,” Merritt says.
Meanwhile, InterDigital’s CEO says the Montreal facility became more integrated through the years with the company’s broader R&D functions. “So while the offices may have their own personalities, we tend to spread the projects across the different facilities,” he says.
Merritt says InterDigital, which also operates a development lab in New York, decided to establish a facility in San Diego because the area has become an important geographic area for the wireless industry.
“You have in that area incredibly good talent covering numerous aspects of both the current technologies deployed in cellular devices as well as the future technologies that are being deployed. And if you know a little bit about InterDigital, we’re very much focused on that next generation of technology that’s going to drive not 3G—we’ve already done that—we’re focused on what’s going to drive 4G, 4-1/2G, 5G phones.”
The company also wants to establish inroads with research universities in Southern California, including U.C. San Diego to establish what InterDigital calls “lablets where additional R&D gets done.”
How fast InterDigital’s San Diego facility grows “will depend on the success of the current project they have,” Merritt added. “If it’s successful, you’ll probably see us ramp more quickly out there. If it’s a slower progression on the compression project, we probably will ramp a little slower.” That means InterDigital’s San Diego workforce could range from the mid-20s to low 30s after a couple of years.
InterDigital also could have additional moves in mind. At the end of March, the company arranged a private financing that enabled InterDigital to raise close to $184 million for general corporate purposes. In a statement at the time, InterDigital said it also might use the capital to acquire intellectual property-related assets, businesses, or a stake in such businesses.
