BlackBerry Drives Into Cars

The pairing serves a dual purpose, said the newswire, as Ford wants to produce cars with a wide variety of automated functions. Elsewhere, BlackBerry wants to soften its reliance on hardware and continue to refashion itself as a software-focused firm.

Reuters said that the partnership is one where BlackBerry has snared its first pact with an automaker directly, above and beyond the current presence that it has with auto suppliers. As has widely been reported, its once-ubiquitous smartphones have been yielding ground, increasingly, to firms such as Samsung and Apple, to name just two. In the meantime, on the auto side, Ford has been aiming to introduce a completely automated vehicle within the next five years.

In a phone interview with the newswire, John Wall, who heads the QNX unit at the tech firm, said that BlackBerry can “form the basis of the entire vehicle all the way from autonomous drive through to infotainment.”