Earlier this week Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth ll and His Royal Highness, The Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Phillip honoured Research In Motion® (RIM) with a visit to our manufacturing facility here in Waterloo, Ontario.
The royal couple was greeted by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, RIM President and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, local dignitaries and hundreds of cheering admirers. After donning their smocks, the Royal Couple was taken on a tour of the manufacturing facility.
(In case you were wondering, everyone who enters onto RIM’s manufacturing production floor needs to wear an electrostatic discharge smock and footwear to help eliminate potential electrostatic charges that can be carried on clothing – even small electrostatic charges could damage the circuit board used in the BlackBerry® smartphones when they are being manufactured.)
During the tour, The Queen and The Duke of Edinburgh had the opportunity to see how the BlackBerry® Bold™ 9700 smartphone is made, and to speak with some RIM employees as well.
When the tour concluded, Mike Lazaridis presented The Queen with a white BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone and The Duke of Edinburgh received a black BlackBerry Bold 9700 smartphone.
The Queen’s BlackBerry smartphone included a picture of children from the Queen Elizabeth Public School in Kitchener, Ontario. The children were all holding flowers and standing in front of a school sign with the message “Q.E. students welcome the Queen to KW”.
The crowd certainly seemed pleased to see The Queen, and I know RIM employees and executives were excited to be able to host this part of her visit to Canada!
The Royal Visit to RIM
