BlackBerry appears to be one of those ‘never say die’ companies. It has managed to stay above the water despite several setbacks after having once dominated the mobile phone market. The Canadian company has been working on the specialized software to create new avenues for business. Autonomous car technology is one area the company has spread its wings and in a latest move, BlackBerry has acquired a company Cylance, a cybersecurity company based out of California. According to a Bloomberg report, the deal worth $1.4 billion.
BlackBerry’s CEO, John Chen has issued a statement that they are already good in a few segments with their Artificial Intelligence based software, like financial, government and healthcare verticals and transportation, mainly autonomous cars could be the next big deal. BlackBerry owns a technology QNX, which is being used by a number of automotive majors, like Ford Motor Co and Tata Motors’s Jaguar Cars and a few more. These companies are working with BlackBerry in developing driverless technology.
Apart from these automotive companies, Baidu Inc and Nvidia Corp are also clients for QNX. The areas that QNX can offer a range of features such as infotainment, connectivity, in-car network security, advanced driver assistance system and over-the-air software update platform. The figure being given out is 120 million cars with the QNX technology working on them. And Cylance has 3500 clients of its own.
The merger of Cylance with BlackBerry, though the California company may continue to have some independence in its operations, will bring more teeth to the QNX technology of the Canadian company and help it expand its sphere of influence in this niche technology. Every automotive company around the world would want to be present with its own offering of cars with the autonomous technology.
BlackBerry was already having a good time with its revenue jumping by almost a third thanks to QNX and now with this announcement of taking over Cylance, the shares of BlackBerry have reached C$11.98 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.