[playbookster]

Look at some of the recent purchases from the tech world's biggest companies. Back in April Twitter purchased a social data analytics firm Gnip for 350 million dollars. Just a few days ago Google bought Dropcam for 550 million dollars and Skybox Imaging for 500 million dollars. Apple has just bought Beats Audio for over 3 BILLION. Facebook bought Oculus for 2 BILLION (they haven't even made a dime yet). How did tech start ups become so highly valued?

So looking back at the 200 million dollar purchase for QNX seems to be an excellent buy. QNX is now in every major car manufacturer, in satellites, power plants, BB10, etc. What do you guys think?

[Ment]

It was a good buy when it happened and a great buy now even at current revenues. Remains to be seen if it can grow to be a large part of RIM.

[howarmat]

i would be curious to see how much QNX pulls in now compared to before. As a company itself I think they should be worth a little more than when bought. As the base of the BB10 os its good but obviously until bb10 sales pick up there isnt anything concrete saying it gives them a huge advantage anywhere. At this point they still havent come close to tapping into what QNX can do with the processing power and such. Have to see where we are at the end of the year.

[app_Developer]

The real cost of QNX wasn't the $200M. The real cost was the significant delay in getting a stable modern OS out the door.

That cost many, many billions.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[playbookster]

The real cost of QNX wasn't the $200M. The real cost was the significant delay in getting a stable modern OS out the door.

That cost many, many billions.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Ok. And how much money would they have lost making bbos8?

The GIF Exchange C001B7B16?

[howarmat]

Ok. And how much money would they have lost making bbos8?

The GIF Exchange C001B7B16?

its not losing if they continued bbos 8. I think they should have almost since it did take so long to get bb10 to market. They should have been working on the new OS back many years, like 2009 and that way there would not have been the huge gap between the OS 7 device releases and the Z10 release

[cjcampbell]

its not losing if they continued bbos 8. I think they should have almost since it did take so long to get bb10 to market. They should have been working on the new OS back many years, like 2009 and that way there would not have been the huge gap between the OS 7 device releases and the Z10 release

Regardless of when they should have started making a new OS, it doesn't add to the "cost" of QNX as app_Developer tried to convey.

[playbookster]

its not losing if they continued bbos 8. I think they should have almost since it did take so long to get bb10 to market. They should have been working on the new OS back many years, like 2009 and that way there would not have been the huge gap between the OS 7 device releases and the Z10 release

That would have required hiring even more staff to make 2 operating systems simultaneously. They really should have bought qnx earlier but now that is just hindsight. This thread is about the future value of qnx and whether 200 mill was a good purchase price.

The GIF Exchange C001B7B16?

[co4nd]

How much money does QNX generate outside of BB10, I think the answer to that is where you will determine if it's a great buy or not. It doesn't matter where QNX is, it only matters if it generates money or leads to sales of devices. So far BB10 hasn't exactly been a financial success.

[early2bed]

Well, since Apple CarPlay apparently depends on QNX, JC should be able to just pick up the phone and call Tim Cook and say "Give me a billion dollars or you don't get in cars."

[cjcampbell]

How much money does QNX generate outside of BB10, I think the answer to that is where you will determine if it's a great buy or not. It doesn't matter where QNX is, it only matters if it generates money or leads to sales of devices. So far BB10 hasn't exactly been a financial success.

As mentioned in the OP, it is being compared to the recent purchases in the tech industry, most notably Facebook's purchase of Oculus which hasn't even made a product for sale, yet it gathered $2 billion. Also, QNX has allowed for BES to go cross platform which will start bringing in revenues once the EZ Pass program comes to an end. Add on the new tech coming to the car industry, although it may not be brining in billions, it will be paying for itself and showing that the $200 million price is pretty cheap for this type of tech in today's terms.

[sentimentGX4]

QNX was neither a good nor bad buy. Extrapolating the value of QNX from radically different products such as Oculus is silly. The products are nothing alike.

What many fans fail to understand is that QNX/embedded OSes is a very well established business model decades and decades older than Blackberry's smartphone business itself. It is NOT a startup with insane growth prospects like Dropcam. Yes, embedded OSes are in everything and everything is reliant on them; but, that has always been the case and you can't price gouge insane licensing costs from them.

Think QNX is worth $1 billion and can be used as a bargaining chip against big players such as Ford? Watch how easily they transition to competing embedded OSes like Windows CE. That is the playing field for the product. The business model is well established.

What app_Developer made was a good point, though. Blackberry did not do anything worthwhile with the QNX. QNX was used to build BB10 which, in hindsight, most would agree put BBRY in a worse situation had it just opted for Android. I would not call QNX a bad purchase for this reason, though. Treat QNX as another non-useful investment asset to BBRY.

Well, since Apple CarPlay apparently depends on QNX, JC should be able to just pick up the phone and call Tim Cook and say "Give me a billion dollars or you don't get in cars."

Hahaha... If Blackberry could do this, it would have done so already. It's not like Blackberry couldn't use $1 billion right about now.

[Ment]

Well, since Apple CarPlay apparently depends on QNX, JC should be able to just pick up the phone and call Tim Cook and say "Give me a billion dollars or you don't get in cars."

But it doesn't. Don't confuse compatibility with necessity. Carplay can be used on multiple platforms. If QNX was allowed to even do this: prevent products from using it like Carplay, Googles car initiative it would soon stop being a player in the embedded auto os market.

[kyleheney]

If BlackBerry can create THE product/solution for enabling the IoT through QNX, then the 200M purchase price would be laughable. They're trying to tap into a potential trillion dollar future opportunity if they can convince everyone that their solution is the best, most secure way to get the IoT properly enabled/accessible.

Posted via CB10

[djdragon]

Look at some of the recent purchases from the tech world's biggest companies. Back in April Twitter purchased a social data analytics firm Gnip for 350 million dollars. Just a few days ago Google bought Dropcam for 550 million dollars and Skybox Imaging for 500 million dollars.

You realize these acquisition are to directly compete or should I say upsurp Cisco and Microsoft in the business world for teleconferencing. They have a custom version of Chrome that auto configures when devices are connected together, it's quite brilliant and pretty stable as a A/V bridge goes.

Z10 10.2.1.3175 via CB10

[wincyUt]

The real cost of QNX wasn't the $200M. The real cost was the significant delay in getting a stable modern OS out the door.

That cost many, many billions.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

No offense, but what you said doesn't make any sense.
QNX didn't create any problems for BlackBerry, rather it's the ineffective utilization of the "QNX potentials " by BlackBerry management that resulted in the mess.
I believe what is being talked about is the potential future value or the significance of the acquisition of QNX in relation to overall scheme of things with BlackBerry.

Posted via CB10

[app_Developer]

No offense, but what you said doesn't make any sense.
QNX didn't create any problems for BlackBerry, rather it's the ineffective utilization of the "QNX potentials " by BlackBerry management that resulted in the mess.
I believe what is being talked about is the potential future value or the significance of the acquisition of QNX in relation to overall scheme of things with BlackBerry.

Posted via CB10

Well, I disagree in that I think they might have saved a year or more if they built BB10, Cascades, etc on top of Linux. Not to mention the ongoing savings from having less work to do with each new chipset going forward.

The user would perceive no difference. They could even have done "desktop" style multitasking if they wanted.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[FobiddenRiceman]

Well, since Apple CarPlay apparently depends on QNX, JC should be able to just pick up the phone and call Tim Cook and say "Give me a billion dollars or you don't get in cars."

Hahhahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha !!!!!!! 8D

I can picture JC on the phone now

[Troy Tiscareno]

Well, since Apple CarPlay apparently depends on QNX, JC should be able to just pick up the phone and call Tim Cook and say "Give me a billion dollars or you don't get in cars."

CarPlay can run on top of QNX, but it can also run on Windows Embedded, Linux, BSD, and even Android. CarPlay only depends on QNX to the extent that a car manufacturer has decided to use QNX already - those that have chosen something else can still use CarPlay just fine.

While there is no doubt that QNX is a profitable business, it's a SMALL profitable business, because the revenues it generates are quite small. Embedded OSs just don't cost a lot from a licensing perspective (lots of competition keeps the prices low), and so it's never been a high-margin business and never will be. For a company the size of BB, and used to billions of dollars in revenue per quarter, QNX's revenues are pretty tiny.

It would be different if BB was a small startup with 50 employees, but BB is a fairly large company with 7000 or so employees, so it needs to operate on a much larger scale.

[Raestloz]

Well, I disagree in that I think they might have saved a year or more if they built BB10, Cascades, etc on top of Linux. Not to mention the ongoing savings from having less work to do with each new chipset going forward.

The user would perceive no difference. They could even have done "desktop" style multitasking if they wanted.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

The problem is, can they really? As easy as it is to claim stuff, the actual implementation may very well be hard. In fact, it is even possible that the purchase of QNX is the reason BlackBerry 10 can get out as soon as it was instead of even later. Samsung has more money than BlackBerry can throw at their R&D, and Knox is still not as secure as BlackBerry.

Between BlackBerry Device Software 5.0 to BlackBerry 7, there wasn't much improvement. It's the exact same OS with different theme and limitations.

Z10 STL100-1/10.2.1.3175

[ndeep13]

Great buy

Posted via BlackBerry z10!

[LoganSix]

i would be curious to see how much QNX pulls in now compared to before.

I would think that QNX has already paid for itself by now or by the end of the current fiscal year.

But the real pay off will be when the "Internet of Things" is realized with the Passport or the medical focused device that comes out next, if the Passport isn't it.

Posted from my Z30 using CB10

[wincyUt]

Well, I disagree in that I think they might have saved a year or more if they built BB10, Cascades, etc on top of Linux. Not to mention the ongoing savings from having less work to do with each new chipset going forward.

The user would perceive no difference. They could even have done "desktop" style multitasking if they wanted.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

QNX is infact BlackBerry's savior right now. Not only is it a vital essential in BB10 but is also proving to be an important tool in "car informant systems" and project IoT. In other words, QNX's sum is greater than the alternative you are suggesting.

[playbookster]

QNX is infact BlackBerry's savior right now. Not only is it a vital essential in BB10 but is also proving to be an important tool in "car informant systems" and project IoT. In other words, QNX's sum is greater than the alternative you are suggesting.

Yes, well said. Where would BlackBerry be right now without qnx?

The GIF Exchange C001B7B16?

[randall2580]

That 200 million was thought to be 4x QNX's yearly income when the sale happened. Even if BlackBerry has increased their sales a number of times, the amount is still not significant enough. How do I know? Go back and listen to the conference call with Chen after the earnings. One of the analysts asked Chen to quantify QNX's contribution to the earnings. He declined. My belief is that if the number was significant he would have bragged about it. He did explain that QNX derives its income from "royalties" and most likely that is a one time payment per use, probably not a large sum.

What BlackBerry has to do is find ways to use the NOC and monetize this on a subscription base. When that happens, ask this question again. BlackBerry are tying to do this.