Blackberry and the QNX team
- So here's a question for some of the people on this forum who have a good understanding of QNX.
I have heard for a very long time, since RIM acquired QNX back in 2010, just how powerful, robust and amazing this company was.
It's been 6+ years since they have been part of the team and in that time frame have seen the full potential from them? I have seen lots of connected car concepts and I know they are part of 60 million cars on the road.
Outside of assisting with the Playbook, BB10 launches and some other products and services such as the tracking system for shipping containers etc, have we seen anything really large scale from that? Anything that's going to be a significant contributor to the bottom line?
I am not trying to sound like I am bad mouthing them or anything. I am trying to figure out if this is a lack of execution, lack of market awareness, lack of resources or something else. Been a shareholder for many years and I am patiently waiting on some growth on the software side that's going to turn this company around.
Thanks for any insight
Posted via CB1005-29-16 02:44 PMLike 0 - So this a broad question, but it's worth noting that Dan Dodge, the founder and CEO of QNX, has retired and is no longer with BlackBerry. IMO, he was the strongest visionary there but I think he oversold the idea that QNX was a good platform for smartphones and tablets. I firmly believe that was a mistake for a number of reasons.
However, I think it is a great platform for things like autonomous vehicles and potentially a large number of different IoT applications (in addition to their core business of car infotainment). The problem is that Playbook and BB10 bled the company of many billions of dollars that probably would have been better invested in bigger ideas like IoT and autonomous vehicles. I don't know what R&D looks like at QNX today with the financial pressure BB is under, but I hope that they are now spending all of what they have left for R&D on projects for which QNX is actually well suited.05-29-16 03:56 PMLike 6 - For me, a lot of smoke and mirrors. I don't know if it's QNX's inability to make a truly consumer based product or BB's fault for not making the most out of all the potential they had but I've always thought that they simply keep talking about stuff that was coming sooner or later. Lately it's just been "car concepts" that to my knowledge still haven't made their way into any car.
All those buzz words like distributed processing, and M2M and others that were crazy popular on these forums never came to the BB10 platform.
Lol I still ask what happened to the hypervisor?????? Thought they said it would be ready in Q1 of this year (or last) and still haven't heard a peep about it.....
Posted via CB10Blacklatino and Dunt Dunt Dunt like this.05-29-16 04:06 PMLike 2 - Dan Dodge is certainly a brilliant visionary. Unfortunately he, and his company, hasn't consistently demonstrated equally exceptional talent to successfully materialize those brilliant visions into profitable reality. At least in a timely manner.
What little I knew of their Gateway-Amiga project (mostly thru friends at Sun so... with a grain of salt) made me apprehensive about combining Dan's "over promise & under deliver" Amiga experience with BB's obvious software bottleneck just demonstrated with Storm1. Like everyone else, I'd hoped Mike and Jim might rise to the occasion and provide the dose of "vision to profitable reality" needed.
Brilliant as they are, Dan's crew had next to zero smartphone experience in 2010, AFAIK. That might be ok if they had 5 years and Apple's resources to play with. They didn't. Their only chance to develop a successfully new smartphone concept from scratch within realistic time & money constraints, was to exploit BB's unmatched smartphone experience. An invaluable resource inexplicably sequestered from Dan's inexperienced crew after Mike read a silly book, it seems. Go figure.Last edited by idssteve; 05-29-16 at 09:52 PM.
05-29-16 09:39 PMLike 3 - Dan Dodge is certainly a brilliant visionary. Unfortunately he, and his company, hasn't consistently demonstrated equally exceptional talent to successfully materialize those brilliant visions into profitable reality. At least in a timely manner.
What little I knew of their Gateway-Amiga project (mostly thru friends at Sun so... with a grain of salt) made me apprehensive about combining Dan's "over promise & under deliver" Amiga experience with BB's obvious software bottleneck just demonstrated with Storm1. Like everyone else, I'd hoped Mike and Jim might rise to the occasion and provide the dose of "vision to profitable reality" needed.
Brilliant as they are, Dan's crew had next to zero smartphone experience in 2010, AFAIK. That might be ok if they had 5 years and Apple's resources to play with. They didn't. Their only chance to develop a successfully new smartphone concept from scratch within realistic time & money constraints, was to exploit BB's unmatched smartphone experience. An invaluable resource inexplicably sequestered from Dan's inexperienced crew after Mike read a silly book, it seems. Go figure.05-29-16 09:58 PMLike 0 - It should also be remembered that QNX has never been a consumer-based company - they've always focused their products towards businesses and industrial applications, with their automobile middleware (and, specifically, the entertainment system modules that car makers can use to build their custom, customer-facing interfaces). Even then, the really important parts of QNX are not customer-facing - they control the sensors, suspension, engine, and other parts of the car in the background.
The point is: it takes a very different mindset to make consumer products - with much tighter timelines, far more competition, and very "public" reputations made, and QNX never had that. That was never their market, and still isn't. It was much the same with BB, except that for a relatively short period of time (around 5 years), consumers embraced intended-for-corporate devices because they were some of the best devices available at the time, and so BB made some concessions to cater to this market. Still, consumers were never BB's market focus, and as the smartphone business became a consumer business rather than a corporate one, BB simply wasn't prepared to compete.
QNX, from what little we know, is also back to being focused on corporate solutions again. I don't really know what products they're working on, but given that they don't make a big amount of money per license, they need to sell a high volume of licenses, and it's unclear if they're working on products besides cars that will meet that criteria.05-29-16 11:36 PMLike 3 - BlackBerry's QNX software licensing fees come in at a mere $3 per vehicle. QNX revenues, tucked away in BlackBerry's software revenues, only account for around 2% to 8% of its top line.the bulk of the estimated 14.1 billion dollar infotainment business goes toward hardware manufacturing.
Posted via CB1005-30-16 10:23 AMLike 0 - The capabilities of QNX were way oversold on these pages. Powerful, in mobile computing, has to do with expanding all sorts of capabilities and that was never what BlackBerry was going to be able to do compared to Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Most of the things that QNX is good at doesn't make much of a difference in mobile computing. If you own stock in BlackBerry then any potential future profits probably aren't going to come from QNX.05-30-16 11:32 AMLike 2
- The capabilities of QNX were way oversold on these pages. Powerful, in mobile computing, has to do with expanding all sorts of capabilities and that was never what BlackBerry was going to be able to do compared to Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Most of the things that QNX is good at doesn't make much of a difference in mobile computing. If you own stock in BlackBerry then any potential future profits probably aren't going to come from QNX.
The big question is. How can they have better MONETIZATION.
BlackBerry QNX is already in over 60 million vehicles. The growth in this segment is phenomenal.
The Technology is the best out there at present.. what is important is what does it do for their bottom line.
QNX isn't something that is seen or "marketable " but it's there.
Posted via CB1005-30-16 01:07 PMLike 4 -
BlackBerry Leads in Connected-Cars Market Google Covets - Bloomberg
About 90 million in revenue at about 3 dollars per vehicle. QNX as a whole is about 100 million in revenue per year.05-30-16 01:20 PMLike 0 - " Oversold "? ? Not in the least. Many gadgets you use already employ QNX including the Apple infotainment system.
The big question is. How can they have better MONETIZATION.
BlackBerry QNX is already in over 60 million vehicles. The growth in this segment is phenomenal.
The Technology is the best out there at present.. what is important is what does it do for their bottom line.
QNX isn't something that is seen or "marketable " but it's there.
Monetization of this technology requires the ability to exploit it. You need existing vehicles, customers, market share, mapping data, cloud infrastructure, and, most importantly, gobs of cash and a long term financial time horizon. BlackBerry has none of these.
If there was anything that lucrative about QNX, John Chen would have been able to sell it a long time ago as non-core asset. If the technology was all that great there would be plenty of interest.. He knew he was moving to Android from day one so there really wasn't any reason to keep it. A division that only generates $100M in revenue isn't worth that much, though.Last edited by early2bed; 05-30-16 at 01:57 PM.
cribble2k likes this.05-30-16 01:43 PMLike 1 - " Oversold "? ? Not in the least. Many gadgets you use already employ QNX including the Apple infotainment system.
The big question is. How can they have better MONETIZATION.
BlackBerry QNX is already in over 60 million vehicles. The growth in this segment is phenomenal.
The Technology is the best out there at present.. what is important is what does it do for their bottom line.
QNX isn't something that is seen or "marketable " but it's there.
Posted via CB1005-30-16 01:49 PMLike 4 - Apparently still being oversold on these pages. I'm sure QNX is in plenty of gadgets. So are nuts and bolts and flash memory but that doesn't make them uniquely important. Take the vehicle segment. There's a lot going on, there but, aside from their PR releases, I don't see QNX being a major player in what's coming. Google has the most ubiquitous self-driving vehicles out there. Tesla has their self-driving systems being used by their actual customers. It's no secret that Apple is investing heavily in someting.
Monetization of this technology requires the ability to exploit it. You need existing vehicles, customers, market share, mapping data, cloud infrastructure, and, most importantly, gobs of cash and a long term financial time horizon. BlackBerry has none of these.
If there was anything that lucrative about QNX, John Chen would have been able to sell it a long time ago as non-core asset. If the technology was all that great there would be plenty of interest.. He knew he was moving to Android from day one so there really wasn't any reason to keep it. A division that only generates $100M in revenue isn't worth that much, though.
He is aware of this fact and the short comings of the QNX system ( monetization) .He has started the focus on software.
Analyst interest have already been peaked at what this can do for Blackberrys ' bottom line.
The self driving race is just started and BlackBerry has joined in, the recent CES in Las Vegas premiered the Toyota Highlander with the QNX technology at its core.
This, on top of the use in other IOT leaves the potential for growth wide open.
Why would they want to "sell" this technology? I'm sorry to disagree with you on the point that they would even consider trying to "sell" it.
Again even Apple utilizes this technology if it's such a waste as you are implying there would be NO takers in this sphere.
BlackBerry isn't going to be number one at anything in the short to medium term, nor do they need to be. They just need to be profitable company.
My personal opinion would be to take the company private and let growth be had without the pressures of the markets and investors.
Time is what's needed to allow for re growth and rebirth. It will happen but not over night.
Posted via CB10Gajja likes this.05-30-16 02:36 PMLike 1 - Actually the design of QNX/BB10 for mobile phones was much better than Android/iOS. When Android does an OS update, it takes over the OS and makes it slow as hell. That doesn't happen with BB10 as the OS manages resources better. It was BlackBerry management that killed BB10, not the design. BB10/QNX is still the best designed mobile OS.05-30-16 02:41 PMLike 5
- Actually the design of QNX/BB10 for mobile phones was much better than Android/iOS. When Android does an OS update, it takes over the OS and makes it slow as hell. That doesn't happen with BB10 as the OS manages resources better. It was BlackBerry management that killed BB10, not the design. BB10/QNX is still the best designed mobile OS.05-30-16 02:42 PMLike 0
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My personal opinion would be to take the company private and let growth be had without the pressures of the markets and investors.Elephant_Canyon likes this.05-30-16 03:35 PMLike 1 -
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Not only did the QNX have no experience in smartphones, they also had limited experience supporting large numbers of 3rd party developers like what you see in the smartphone and tablet world.
We can at least agree it's subjective.Elephant_Canyon and JeepBB like this.05-30-16 04:43 PMLike 2 - I totally disagree. The process and memory model in BB10 is not a good idea in a phone at all. They made some mistakes that others figured out a long time ago. And some of the APIs were very amateurish compared to what we had even at the time in Android or iOS or Windows.
Not only did the QNX have no experience in smartphones, they also had limited experience supporting large numbers of 3rd party developers like what you see in the smartphone and tablet world.
We can at least agree it's subjective.05-30-16 04:51 PMLike 0 - I totally disagree. The process and memory model in BB10 is not a good idea in a phone at all. They made some mistakes that others figured out a long time ago. And some of the APIs were very amateurish compared to what we had even at the time in Android or iOS or Windows.
Not only did the QNX have no experience in smartphones, they also had limited experience supporting large numbers of 3rd party developers like what you see in the smartphone and tablet world.
We can at least agree it's subjective.05-30-16 05:06 PMLike 0 -
The issue is the rest of the OS. The idea that every app is a certain process doesn't work in phones. The lifecycle of the app really has to distinct from the lifecycle of the underlying process(es). This idea is very well developed in Android, and flat out doesn't even exist in BB10. That, in turns, leads to a very poor memory model.
And then you have the graphics libs and all other frameworks and APIs presented to apps. All of these are part of a complete OS, and areas where the QNX team had little experience and poor designs.Elephant_Canyon and JeepBB like this.05-30-16 05:53 PMLike 2 -
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