RIM purchased QNX Software Systems back in 2010 for $200 million. At the time the company was solely focused on bringing the web to the automotive market. Over the past few months we’ve seen RIM expand the OS into their PlayBook, and also acknowledge that future BlackBerry smartphones will be powered by QNX.
During the recent Q2 financial results Mike Lazaridis, RIM co-CEO, said “Development efforts on the first QNX-based smartphone products are going extremely well. We plan to ensure that when we launch the product will have the features, industrial design and content and app ecosystem it needs to deliver a dynamic and industry leading customer experience. The development platform for QNX phones will be presented in more detail at DevCon in October, and prototype phones featuring the QNX operating system and development platform will be available in the not to distant future.”
Now a slide from the recent QNX Auto Summit in Japan shows the letters “BBX”, this is the abbreviation that RIM is expected to rename the OS, letting go of the familiar BlackBerry OS and possibly bringing the company under one unified brand.
So it’s certainly a time of transition for RIM, but an exciting transition. It’ll be interesting to see what these new BBX/QNX-based prototype smartphones will be like, both in looks and raw power. Over the past few months rumours surfaced of a touchscreen device with a dual-core processor that goes by the code name of “Colt”.
The BlackBerry DevCon is happening on October 18th in San Fransisco.
Source: CrackBerry
