Love What You Do
The BlackBerry Torch circa 2010
BlackBerry gets a brief mention in my Digital Marketing and Social Media course each year.
In the section on branding and rebranding, I like to show the BlackBerry Torch “Love What You Do” ad featuring Diplo when we talk about Research In Motion’s transition to BlackBerry and its fall from smartphone grace.
When that ad ran, Diplo wasn’t a household name.
Sure, he’d co-produced M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" in 2007 and was considered a rising star by Rolling Stone magazine, but, oddly, it was this BlackBerry ad that pushed him into everyday parlance.
In the ad, Diplo, dressed in a suit while DJing, doesn’t come across as the sort of person you'd expect to own or use a BlackBerry.
I’m sure that Diplo wears suits, but I believe he would have been more likely to be topless and wearing a cowboy hat than carrying a BlackBerry at that time.
As you might expect, some of the students know who Diplo is; very few know what a BlackBerry is.
That ad’s video was uploaded to YouTube exactly 16 years ago today, on September 27th, 2010.
IYKYK: If you still have a collection of MP3 files and old smartphones, the BlackBerry Torch still makes a reasonably good MP3 player.
RIM/BlackBerry Market Cap Over Time
Quantum Software Systems
Gordon Bell and Dan Dodge, both students at the University of Waterloo in 1980, took a course in microkernel real-time operating systems (RTOS).
They were convinced there was a commercial application for such a system and moved to Kanata, Ontario, to start a software company to put their microkernel concept to the test.
Quantum Software Systems was born and later renamed QNX Software Systems (probably because there wasn’t anything Quantum-related about what they were doing).
In 2004, QNX announced it had been sold to Harman International Industries.
Before this acquisition, QNX had already established a foothold in the automotive industry for telematics systems due to the reliability and stability of its operating system.
In 2010, a few months before the Diplo ad ran, Research In Motion (BlackBerry) acquired QNX Software Systems.
BlackBerry’s plan here was to use QNX’s code to enhance its ability to integrate its phones with vehicle infotainment systems.
The Creative Life Of The Last BlackBerrys
QNX was integrated into the heart of the BlackBerry 10 operating system.
It could be found on phones like the BlackBerry Z10, Q10, and the much-anticipated BlackBerry Playbook, their failed tablet device.
These QNX-based devices were stable, had a better than average battery-life, and some of them still had physical, thumb-based keyboards.
But none of that mattered in the iPhone, Android touch-screen duopoly that subsumed them.
The Day Obama Forgot His BlackBerry Became National News
By 2015, BlackBerry stopped making its own mobile operating system and fully adopted Android with the launch of the BlackBerry Priv.
Similar to how Apple outsourced manufacturing to Foxconn, the last generation of devices to carry the BlackBerry logo was actually manufactured by TCL (The Creative Life) in China.
In 2020, BlackBerry did not renew TCL’s license to manufacture BlackBerry devices and shut down BlackBerry mobile services entirely in 2022.
At its height in 2010, aka the Diplo era (no one calls it that), BlackBerry had over 50% of the smartphone market share in the US before dropping to under 1% by 2016.
When those TCL BlackBerrys were sold, they didn’t even register among the top smartphone brands in 2020.
BlackBerry’s Gone Bye-Bye
Don’t worry about TCL; they have a growing TV business, acquired a bunch of Samsung Display's assets, and now make all of Sony’s home entertainment products.
Smartphone On Wheels
As a consumer-facing brand, BlackBerry remains dead, relatively unknown, left to the space of minimalist lifestyle maxxers on YouTube who don’t want to use attention-sucking apps.
However, QNX has proven to be the lifeblood keeping the company’s BlackBerry Messenger and Snake-based dreams alive.
Automakers are consolidating many vehicle software functions into a smaller number of powerful computers that must run safety features, drive-assist, cockpit software, connectivity and AI workloads together.
QNX can tie them all together and run on the same chips.
BMW Neue Klasse
For example, BMW’s Neue Klasse architecture uses four high-performance computers, or “Superbrains” as BMW likes to call them, with more than 20 times the computing power of previous generations of its in-vehicle hardware.
In January, QNX announced that its technology will be integrated into BMW's "Neue Klasse" vehicles to support safety-critical systems across its model line-up.
BMW isn’t alone.
With the exception of companies like Tesla and Rivian, which have their own vehicle operating systems, QNX software can be found in nearly every other vehicle brand you can name, from Audi to Volkswagen, from Ford to Ferrari.
BlackBerry lives.
Not on your smartphone, and with no thumb-based keyboard in sight, but, ironically, behind that touchscreen in your car, just above your wheels.
Meanwhile, In Canada
This week, BlackBerry secured a $100-million-plus deal for its new Alloy Kore automotive software with Coretura AB, a joint venture between truck-making giants Daimler Truck and Volvo Group.
The deal, the first for Alloy Kore, comes before the product’s official market release later this year. It’s one of the largest design wins in the company's history.
Also this week, BlackBerry posted stronger-than-expected second-quarter results and raised its financial forecasts for the second time this year.
The company said it generated $163 million in revenue in the quarter ended Aug. 31, an increase of 26% from the same period a year ago.
That was driven by a 27% increase in sales from QNX.
In the last 12 months, BlackBerry has nearly doubled its market cap.
IMHO
Automakers aren’t good at code.
Why should they be?
Developing software was never their core function.
Auto OEMs use suppliers to provide the component parts they need to manufacture their vehicles.
As compute gets more centralized inside vehicles, software is just another component part.
QNX has the highest automotive and industrial safety certifications on Earth (ISO 26262 ASIL D).
In that world, BlackBerry (with QNX) is poised to play an even bigger role in the future vehicle supplier ecosystem.
While we wait for those Neue Klasse vehicles to arrive, we can just listen to Diplo’s remix of Beyoncé's “Drunk in Love”.