Newsletter
Self-driving cars have become a big deal here lately ever since Google decided that humans caused too much harm to themselves and that we should let machines do the work for us. From Tesla, Apple, and Uber, companies have begun to enter a market where humans no longer have to worry about having to step behind the wheel when their half asleep or just got done hanging with their friends at the bar. Well, the self driving initiatives don’t stop with just Google, Apple, and Tesla. BlackBerry has decided to join the race to build a sufficient self driving car. During the Consumer Electronics Show, BlackBerry displayed cars that can scan for obstacles, prevent lane drift, and even communicate with other cars on the road to avert from accidents.
It may sound a little odd as to why BlackBerry, a phone maker, is creating self driving cars. But if you think about it, their smartphone division has been declining for several years now. If they continue to stay in the same market while trying to turn the company around their future won’t be so bright. Not to mention that in April of 2010 BlackBerry acquired an operating system for cars called QNX. The software was initially going to be used to connect BlackBerries to cars with a full on display and audio features. Fast forward to the future and it would only make sense to use the technology to have functioning autonomous cars. In a blogpost by BlackBerry, the company said that with the QNX platform has been designed to push the advanced driver assistance systems forward. In other words, they need to hop on this now so they can turn their company around and bring in revenue.
BlackBerry is still working on their smartphones with high hopes to turn that division around and make it profitable once again. In the meantime the Canadian company will work tirelessly to get QNX up to par and push them forward. BlackBerry has some tough competition in the market, especially with Google who is practically the pioneer in this area of the market. With companies promising to have these cars on road by 2020, we will see where BlackBerry stands with their QNX technology.
