The Ottawa Business Journal is reporting that Apple has leased a 22,000 ft space in Kanata, Ontario. Notably, the location is in close proximity to the BlackBerry QNX offices. Whether Apple is interested in attracting QNX employees for itself is not clear. It is definitely possible that the geography is coincidental. However, QNX is known to be working on autonomous driving and Apple may want to take some of this engineering talent for its own Apple Car research.
Update: QNX confirmed to us the validity of their statement to N4BB.
Though you presumably won’t see the handset maker’s logo anywhere on your dashboard or in the CarPlay interface, BlackBerry-owned QNX’s software for smartphone and display compatibility is apparently present in Apple’s new automotive technology. Tech site N4BB speculated and later updated(viaiDownloadblog) with a statement from QNX that Apple’s existing partnership with the firm extends to implementing compatibility support for Apple CarPlay.
Connectivity to smartphones and other mobile devices is a key strength of QNX Software Systems’ platform for car infotainment systems, and many automakers and tier one automotive suppliers use our platform to implement smartphone/head-unit integration in their vehicles. We have a long-standing partnership with Apple to ensure high-quality connectivity with their devices, and this partnership extends to support for Apple CarPlay.
The move to work with QNX on CarPlay is interesting, not only because of the BlackBerry connection, but also for the approach used to launch CarPlay. Apple, of course, doesn’t manufacture vehicles so the service is dependent on partnerships with automakers, but the apparent QNX relationship on the software and hardware side illustrates Apple’s focus on getting the feature announced at WWDC last June into the hands of users and out of concept rather than building it in-house from the ground up. Expand Expanding Close
