Back in the early 2000s everyone seemed to have a BlackBerry. The built in keypad and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) messaging system endeared everyone from A-List celebrities to members of the general public. Then the iPhone launched and killed it.
But BlackBerry didn’t go away, the company continued to operate and the chances are you’re still using a BlackBerry every day. If you drive a car daily, anyway. The former cellphone manufacturer pivoted hard into software, and has been pretty successful on that front.
But BlackBerry doesn’t make a lot of noise about its software products, so you won’t even know you’re probably using them all the time. One of its most successful products is QNX, a “real-time operating system” used by a lot of vehicle manufacturers.
It’s built to handle safety-critical tasks which rely on very precise and predictable timing. Such as a vehicle reacting to a sensor input and slapping on the emergency brakes. While you can use something like Android or Linux for an infotainment system, they aren’t anywhere near accurate enough to manage something like an ADAS system.
In addition to a vehicle’s ADAS system, things like digital instrument clusters, audio systems, and infotainment panels, all use BlackBerry’s software. It can also be used to help consolidate all of these functions onto a single chip. Which is a major plus as OEMs shift their business models towards more software-heavy vehicles.
It does this through something called the QNX Hypervisor, which allows you to run a safety-critical function on the same chip as an infotainment system. The hypervisor shields critical systems and ensures that if the infotainment software crashes, it doesn’t take the ADAS functions on the chip out with it. This sandboxing capability is also a major requirement for self-driving systems like BlueCruise and SuperCruise.
BlackBerry didn’t make the software from scratch, instead it acquired QNX back in 2010. BlackBerry was still predominantly a hardware-focused phone company back then, so the acquisition flew under the radar to some extent. Then when smartphones ousted older styles of device, many just thought BlackBerry had collapsed.
Why is BlackBerry so successful in the automotive space?
The reason manufacturers like BMW, Mercedes, Toyota, Volkswagen, Volvo, Honda, GM, and Ford all use BlackBerry’s system is simple. It works, it’s tested to a high standard, and developing their own systems would be a nightmare.
BlackBerry’s QNX software has achieved a ISO 26262 certification, which is as high as it gets as far as automotive safety is concerned. QNX isn’t new either, instead, it has been developed and built upon over decades. As it’s quite possibly BlackBerry’s main money maker, it undergoes constant testing and development.
While the likes of BMW have huge research and development budgets, and do like to create proprietary systems (as their ventures into AI and infotainment prove), just licensing QNX is a smarter move. The cost to develop something of the same standard would be astronomical, the chances of it being anywhere near as good as BlackBerry’s effort are slim, and you’re also taking on a lot of liability if something does go wrong due to a software issue. Instead, BMW has used QNX as the foundation of its Neue Klasse software architecture.
Which is why BlackBerry’s software is present in over 275 million vehicles at the time of writing, with that number only set to increase. If you’ve bought a car in recent years, it’s probably in your vehicle too. Though the chances of a manufacturer including a revived version of BBM in their infotainment offerings remain slim.
