Although BlackBerry is no longer a major player in the mobile market, it continues to expand its presence in the automotive market. The company will use mapping technology Baidu, the Chinese counterpart and competitor to Google, to be used in the electric cars of the future in China.
According to the report CNET, Baidu's high-resolution mapping technology for vehicles will run on BlackBerry's QNX Neutrino real-time operating system. This technology will be used by Guangzhou Automobile Group and the Chinese company's future electric vehicles, which will use BlackBerry/Baidu technology. It marks another step for BlackBerry in its development efforts in China, which comes after it struck a deal with Baidu to provide its software for Apollo's self-driving car program.
For now, the BlackBerry software acts only as a support system in relation to driver assistance technology. However, the company aims to launch a fully automated driving system sometime in the future. In addition, the company said its software is already in use in over 175 million vehicles worldwide that are equipped with active safety or driver assistance features.
Unfortunately, this is all the available information on this matter. It remains to be seen if this partnership with Baidu includes other commitments and new deals also emerging for BlackBerry. Notably, Baidu is also partnering with Geely to build its own vehicles. So stay tuned.
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