Motorola Birmingham design center might be closed

The Register is reporting that Motorola's outpost in Birmingham, England has officially been placed on death row this week, with its 121 staff ominously being told that they're "at risk for redundancy." We're pretty sure that's code for "we think someone else is already doing your job, but we need to confirm that and get back to you," so in the meantime it seems like a brilliant idea for the so-notified folks to prep their CVs and hightail it outta there. To be fair, Moto is apparently going to start by trying to offer relocation or work-from-home deals for some of the Birmingham peeps, but it seems that it's a best-case scenario. Even worse, the office is a Moto design center; correct us if we're wrong, but we don't think you turn around a struggling phone manufacturer by killing off design, right? And one must take into consideration, that many Motorola phones were saved by the design, and we shouldn't forget that "RazorMoto" was made such a success at its time by its exterior and not its features.