Originally Posted by
Troy Tiscareno IMO, you don't have a very good understanding.
Google could have bought QNX for pocket change in 2010 (much like RIM actually did). And of course Google was aware of their existence. Google also could have built Android on top of LinuxRT (the RTOS version of Linux) - but they didn't. In fact, none of the other OS makers (Apple, Samsung, Microsoft, Palm, Nokia, Firefox, Ubuntu, Jolla) used a RTOS version of their OS, even though they could have.
If using a RTOS was so important, and had such big advantages in mobile, why wouldn't any of these very smart people gone that way?
The answer is simply that the advantages of a RTOS simply aren't as important to a mobile OS (which is constrained by a limited battery life and limited processing power) as other things are, and so all of those companies built their OSs with mobile-first priorities.
Both iOS and Android can multitask just fine - but Apple and Google intentionally, after much thought and debate, designed in specific limitations in order to protect against undesired usage of battery and mobile data - they prevent things from running in the background unless it makes good sense not to. Android, being more open and customization by design, did this by making first-party apps have these limits, but allows the user to use third-party apps that don't (i.e., YouTube vs. third party YouTube clients), so that they won't be responsible for dead batteries and data overages from people who launch YouTube in the background and forget to turn it off.
The point is: Google could much more easily move Android to a LinuxRT base (instead of QNX) if they felt that RTOSs gave them an advantage - but they haven't, and they won't. Either way, they don't need or want QNX. If they did, Larry Page would have pulled out his Black Card in 2010 and bought the company - it would have cost less than one of several airplanes that Google owns. Or, maybe Apple would have bought it, or Microsoft...