To advance the deployment of its connected and autonomous vehicle technology, phone manufacturer turned SaaS company BlackBerry is expanding its partnership with LG Electronics Inc.
The partnership expansion with LG comes as BlackBerry reports revenues of $247 million USD for Q1 of this fiscal year.
Under the new agreement, LG will use BlackBerry QNX software and services to build digital consolidated cockpits, including infotainment systems, digital instrument clusters, and telematics systems for multiple OEMs. The relationship builds on a 15-year history of collaboration between the two companies, and comes as BlackBerry reports revenues of $247 million USD for the quarter ended May 31, up from S$213 million USD in the same quarter last year.
“BlackBerry has been a trusted supplier to LG for nearly 15 years, providing flexible QNX-based software solutions that have helped them to deliver millions of high-quality systems to the world’s leading automakers,” said Kaivan Karimi, senior vice president and co-head of BlackBerry Technology Solutions. “We are thrilled to build on and expand our relationship with them as part of our commitment to provide automakers with safety-certified, secure and reliable solutions and look forward to our teams working closely together to help produce cutting-edge cars for the future of [the] automotive market.”
For the new systems, Ottawa-based BlackBerry will provide LG with QNX software, including its Software Development Platform, its safety operating system, the QNX Hypervisor, QNX acoustics middleware, QNX SDK for Apps and Media, as well as a variety of engineering services for system-level integration, performance optimization, and solution validation.
“BlackBerry QNX has been our long-term, reliable partner for more than a decade, providing high performance, secure and trusted mission-critical software solutions that have helped LG delivered millions of high-quality systems to the world’s automakers,” said Hwang Won-yong, head of audio, video, navigation and cluster engineering at LG’s Vehicle Component Solutions Company.
“We are pleased to further expand and strengthen our partnership with BlackBerry QNX, using its innovative solutions in the next generation of connected and autonomous vehicle technologies including the future of in-vehicle infotainment systems,” he stated.
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BlackBerry recently announced that its QNX software was integrated into more than 150 million cars, representing an increase of 30 million cars since the company reported on its automotive footprint last year. It reported that it works with a variety of automotive manufacturers, including Audi, BMW, Ford, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, KIA, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, Toyota, and Volkswagen. The company also partners with automotive Tier 1 manufacturers, like Aptiv, Denso, Panasonic and Visteon, and silicon partners, such as Intel, Qualcomm, Nvidia, NXP and Renesas.
The BlackBerry QNX Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Centre (AVIC) was created to develop connected and autonomous vehicles technology, independently as well as in collaboration with private companies, public sector organizations, and research institutes.
Image courtesy BlackBerry via Instagram