Yesterday we saw Apple announce the arrival of CarPlay, the new system through which vehicle manufacturers can provide an in-dash interface to give drivers quick access to Siri, driving directions, as well as their favorite music. It all sounded like a pretty nice effort, with a number of big-name auto companies planning support. But as we learn more about CarPlay and how it works, one very interesting wrinkle is coming to light: the vehicle side of CarPlay sure sounds like it’s running on top of QNX.
Yes, that’s the same QNX BlackBerry acquired several years ago and which formed the basis for the current BlackBerry 10 platform. After noticing that QNX described Apple as a “strategic partner,” N4BB put together the theory that the Car Play software in cars was essentially running on top of QNX, and reached out to the company to confirm. The response from QNX was in the affirmative, with the company saying, “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.”
That’s just delicately worded enough to keep us from saying with authority that all CarPlay implementations everywhere will run on QNX, but it does make clear that QNX is a significant part of CarPlay, and that on its own is pretty fascinating in our book.