That's when it suddenly went from open source to closed source. One day, RIM removed the sources from the web and FTP servers.
QNX used to be a standalone company. They declined a buyout by Microsoft. Then one of their key people died, and they sold out to Harmon, the car audio company. So then they were heavily into automotive dashboard applications, which continues. Then RIM bought them, which gave the Blackberry a better underlying OS but didn't fix Blackberry's problem of an obsolete UI and business model.
Meanwhile, QNX still sells to real-time and industrial automation customers, but those customers feel kind of neglected. Incidentally, the Boston Dynamics robots all have QNX managing the balance and the hydraulic servovalves. You need reliable hard real time for that.
I don't really think that BBOS 10 has an obsolete UI. The Hub is actually really convenient and I wish more smartphones had something like it.
Blackberry isn't failing because of their OS, they're failing because they were way too late to market with robust smartphones and lost a huge amount of mindshare after Apple and Google ate their lunch.
Yeah they have huge problems which QNX itself can't begin to fix. Yet, the Blackberry Playbook (running on QNX) totally screamed in performance and responsiveness in the tests against the iPad. Showed how smart a decision they made to use a proper RTOS for their devices. I gave product manager props for the decision.
I think they should stick to their strong suit and build on strengths in business world. Collaboration, integration with legacy stuff, bake in more security than iPhone/Android, and so on. Build services on top of that like IBM does with all their stuff. And so on.
QNX used to be a standalone company. They declined a buyout by Microsoft. Then one of their key people died, and they sold out to Harmon, the car audio company. So then they were heavily into automotive dashboard applications, which continues. Then RIM bought them, which gave the Blackberry a better underlying OS but didn't fix Blackberry's problem of an obsolete UI and business model.
Meanwhile, QNX still sells to real-time and industrial automation customers, but those customers feel kind of neglected. Incidentally, the Boston Dynamics robots all have QNX managing the balance and the hydraulic servovalves. You need reliable hard real time for that.