What Happened
Ending months of speculation, Research in Motion (RIM) finally announced the commercialization of QNX’s technology within one of its own products, the soon to be released Blackberry Playbook (a.k.a. “BlackPad”).
VDC’s View
QNX Software Systems has had a long history in the embedded market, first establishing itself within the telecom/datacom and industrial automation markets and then later turning itself into one of the leaders within the automotive IVI market. Over recent years, however, QNX’s advancements and focus on the automotive market came somewhat at the expense of its position in some of its traditional vertical markets, where it had begun to lose market share to other RTOS vendors.
Although QNX had begun to refocus on some of these other industries prior to its acquisition, we thought that the separation away from former parent Harman International (a leading OEM in the automotive IVI platform market) as well as the access to RIM’s deeper resources could help it become more successful in achieving its realignment goals.
Whereas RIM’s original announcement of the acquisition highlighted potential synergies for new peripheral devices for automobiles, leveraging QNX’s domain expertise, VDC mused that the largest opportunities may come in other device classes.
As we all know, one of Blackberry’s main competitors over the years has been Microsoft’s various Mobile/Phone/Pocket PC platforms. QNX, however, has waged its own war against Microsoft in other embedded device classes, primarily facing off against the company in the automotive IVI market against MS’s Automotive and NavReady platforms.
What we all wanted to know was whether or not RIM would look to leverage QNX’s technology assets together within its own experience in the consumer/mobile device sector. Turns out they will. Now the big question will be whether or not RIM can set aside its acquisition track record and allow QNX to remain an “independent” subsidiary – especially if the Playbook is successful.
We expect that although broader access to RIM’s R&D and marketing budgets could be beneficial to QNX, it could run the risk of deviating even further from its core markets (and revenue base) than it did under Harman’s control. All in all, this could prove to be a huge opportunity for QNX to grow its footprint and brand since it has had very few previous deployments in consumer electronic devices.
We all look forward to watching how the relationship between QNX and RIM evolves, especially as RIM and QNX work together to expand into device classes beyond their traditional domains.
Interested in learning more about the where QNX stacks up in the embedded/real-time operating system market? VDC recently published a report providing additional details and information on market share, competitive positioning, and vertical market penetration, among other OS market statistics in its 2010 Embedded/Real-time Operating System report. We also recently published a series of reports that provide insight into the requirements, trends, and preferences of embedded engineering teams that are using and expecting to use different embedded and mobile operating systems in their current and future projects.
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