BlackBerry Claims Major QNX Automotive Design Win Through Denso Partner

Revenue in BlackBerry’s Technology Solutions group increased 30.6 percent in Q1 ended May 31 to $47 million, said the company Friday. Sales of BlackBerry’s QNX embedded-software platform for connected and autonomous vehicles led the charge in that division, said CEO John Chen on an earnings call. “QNX continued strong year-over-year growth momentum with several new design wins.” One was for a “digital instrument cluster” for a major automotive OEM through BlackBerry’s partnership with Denso, he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have permission to state the name of the customer, “ he said. “We are, however, very excited about this partnership win with Denso and the long-term business opportunity with both Denso, as well as the customer.” BlackBerry scored an additional QNX design win with Byton, the Chinese electric vehicle start-up, which has been described publicly “as a rival to Tesla,” said Chen. Byton has “global aspirations” and is targeting to make its car first available in China starting in 2019 and “go global from that point,” he said. China “is the largest and one of the fastest-growing electric passenger car markets in the world with a very strong government mandate,” he said. Byton unveiled the M-Byte SUV prototype at January CES, and previewed a concept Level 4 autonomous vehicle sedan, the K-Byte, at CES Asia (see 1806140002). The QNX design wins “reinforce” the “importance and success of our strategy to contribute at each level in the broad auto ecosystem,” said Chen. The companies in that ecosystem “all recognize the increasing importance of the safety and reliability capabilities provided by BlackBerry QNX software,” he said. Chen sees QNX tracking a “gradual” growth path in autonomous vehicles, he said in Q&A. “That doesn’t mean that we won’t hit home runs to give us a bump,” but the three-year plan for QNX penetration in autonomous cars will be of a “gradual nature,” he said.