Five Reasons Ford’s Switch from Microsoft to Blackberry QNX is a Good Thing

Better Interfaces:

QNX may not be a household name to you, but that doesn’t mean the company isn’t well respected within the realm of suppliers. The company has excellent partnerships with a number of software and hardware vendors, including folks like Nvidia, Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Nokia, Aisin and Nuance.  These folks are among the best in the business when it comes to providing excellent user-experiences, something that MyFord Touch isn’t known for.

Nvidia, Texas Instruments and Qualcomm are all strong players in the world of embedded systems. Nvidia is known for its impressive video-rendering capabilities while Qualcomm processors are found powering many smart-phones on the market. Nokia owns a company called HERE, which provides navigation data for use in cars. Four out of five in-car systems on the road in the US and Europe use data provided by HERE. Aisin is a supplier well known for transmissions but also dabbles in the world of infotainment, providing navigation information for the Japanese market. Finally, there’s Nuance which  provides excellent voice-recognition technology, the most popular of which is used in Apple’s Siri personal assistant.

All of these vendors and suppliers have partnered with QNX in the past and when used together could provide some of the easier to use and most responsive infotainment systems in the automotive industry, like the QNX Concept Car that was shown off at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show. Think of how far BMW’s iDrive system has come – thanks in part to a QNX system cooperating with these technology vendors.