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From the car to your phone: How BlackBerry ported over QNX for its new OS
By now, you know all about BlackBerry 10, with its myriad gestures, its bustling notifications Hub, and the BlackBerry Balance mode, which separates work-centric applications and accounts from personal ones. You may also be aware that BlackBerry is hedging its bets on these features, which are the main attractions behind the newly overhauled mobile operating system. All of these features are made possible by QNX’s real-time operating system—one that the Canada-based company takes great pride in.
BlackBerry (née RIM) acquired QNX Systems in April 2010 with the intention of gaining a major foothold in the automotive industry. Although QNX has its hand in several automotive projects—the QNX Car Platform 2.0 is featured in the Bentley Continental GT, for instance, and the software has historically been embedded in the control systems of other high-end luxury vehicles—BlackBerry’s focus, for now, remains on its mobile devices, and it’s using this acquisition to hold on to its relevance in the mobile operating system wars.
While BlackBerry 10 still hasn't officially debuted in the United States, we thought we'd take a look at the framework behind BlackBerry 10 and see how the company's acquisition of this real-time operating system has been implemented in its new OS.