Is a PhD in TCS the best way towards achieving a career in industrial research? My idea of a dream career is a career in industrial research, where one gets to tackle problems which are challenging, and also have a practical usage. To that end, is pursuing a PhD in TCS (I'm interested in topics such as distributed/parallel algorithms, online algorithms) a bad idea ? I've the notion that most, if not all, PhD applicants in TCS are expected to pursue a career in academia - is that a valid precept ? 

I've noticed distinguished academics who are regular users of this site - I'm especially looking for guidance from any such person, as I don't want to apply for a doctoral program with the wrong goals in mind. To give a brief description of my profile, I've graduated with MTech in CS (from a fairly reputable institute in my country) about 2 years back, and been working in a MNC ever since on kernel level device drivers.

This question may not be the most ideal question for this site, but I couldn't find a better place to ask it. Requesting the moderators not to close this outright, as I'm really in need of some advice here.
The comments are all pretty spot on (and maybe they should be answers). To add to them: 

In industrial research of the Google/Yahoo!/AT&amp;T/MSR/IBM variety, there are definitely specific area interests, but there's also interest in people with broad interests and strong foundations. A Ph.D in TCS can provide such a broad set of interests and a strong foundation if you choose the right topics. 

So for example you could do a Ph.D in computational geometry, focusing on combinatorial problems in incidence geometry, or you could focus on approximate high dimensional algorithms. It's possible that the second topic might allow you to "sell" yourself more effectively as a data analyst, especially if you can point to some awareness of the applications of your work (some papers etc). 

So even if you were to do a Ph.D in TCS as a path towards industrial research, the success of this plan really depends on the kinds of topics you choose. In the long term, I think it'll make you very flexible and able to work on a variety of things, but you'll have to seek out that breadth during your education.