Huawei and BlackBerry must have a war

Wen 丨 Chinese business strategy

You think it's dead? In fact, the BlackBerry, which does not rely on mobile phones, lives far more moist than we think.

01

Beginning January 4, 2022, BlackBerry discontinued all support and services for the BlackBerryOS system.

As the hegemon of the times, BlackBerry, which has long disappeared, has only recently completely withdrawn from the historical stage of mobile phones.

But more than a decade ago, BlackBerry was almost the absolute overlord of the feature machine era.

In 2008, BlackBerry's market capitalization was as high as $83 billion, and its position in Canada was equivalent to Finland's Nokia.

With unparalleled "security", BlackBerry swept the world with its iconic full-keypad phone, once accounting for 48% of the market in the United States and 20% of the global market. Merkel, Cameron, and Obama have become loyal users of BlackBerry.

In 2010, when Apple's mobile phone marked the era of smart phones, BlackBerry acquired the QNX system from an audio manufacturer and developed the Blackberry OS mobile phone system based on it, but this proved to be a failed attempt.

Blackberry OS, which is obsessed with "security" and even sacrifices fluency, lags far behind IOS and Android in terms of content ecology and interactive convenience, and the huge gap in user experience is quickly reflected in market share.

By 2016, BlackBerry's share of the world had dropped to zero, in September of the same year BlackBerry officially announced that it would stop developing and producing smartphones, and in December, BlackBerry licensed the BlackBerry brand to TCL, which was responsible for production and sales.

In August 2020, TCL stopped selling BlackBerry phones; on January 4 this year, it completely stopped serving.

Interestingly, although the BlackBerry lost, the BlackBerry did not lose, and won very beautifully, and the key role in this is the QNX system that has failed miserably to IOS and Android, and a Chinese-American born in Hong Kong - Cheng Shouzong.

02

At the time of the decline of BlackBerry, the two founders and CEOs of BlackBerry, Laza Diris and Flekin, left due to disagreements; successor Hines did not find another way, but upgraded the BlackBerry system based on QNX, continuing to fight Against Android and IOS.

However, this strategy failed to save the BlackBerry and exacerbated the company's losses, and Haynes was "dissuaded" by the board.

Subsequently, Cheng Shouzong, who is known as a "rescue expert" in the United States, took office:

"I like to talk about the glory of the past, but now these are gone from us. We have to shift mindsets and development strategies, and our goal is to be the world's number one enterprise security company, and that's just the beginning, not the end. ”

Under the rule of Cheng Shouzong, BlackBerry integrated resources, conducted research and development around QNX, exerted BlackBerry's "security" characteristics, and shined in enterprise network security applications, and the related business created a lot of revenue for the company, and BlackBerry lived again.

BlackBerry, a successful enterprise security company, has also shown amazing talent in the automotive field with its QNX system, which has allowed BlackBerry to not only survive but also live more moist.

Why did QNX, which had no combat effectiveness before, suddenly jump to the top? The reason for its success is almost exactly the same as the reason for the success of the BlackBerry mobile phone that year, that is, impeccable security, only this time, the "security" insisted on by BlackBerry and QNX really grasped the pulse of the industry.

At that time, there were three main operating system vendors in the automotive industry: BlackBerry's QNX, Microsoft's Windows CE, and open source Linux.

All three have their own advantages, but in terms of safety, QNX has the ability to absolutely crush. According to a survey by the NVD agency, the number of vulnerabilities in QNX that fall within the prescribed limits is less than 5 per year, while Linux systems generally range from 200 to 500.

In 2007, Ford used Microsoft's in-vehicle system to load more than 7 million Ford vehicles, but during the period of complaints and errors, Ford had to abandon Microsoft and launch BlackBerry's QNX in 2014. Even if QNX is expensive and charges according to the number of units pre-installed, there is still a steady stream of top automakers who come to work with it.

Since then, "security and stability" has also become its biggest signboard. More and more first-line car companies began to choose QNX systems, and the market share of QNX gradually distanced itself from the other two and became a brother in the industry.

According to Strategy Analytics' June 2020 statistics, more than 195 million cars worldwide are equipped with BlackBerry's QNX software system, and many of the top automakers such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Honda and Volkswagen are its customers.

Of the top 25 electric vehicle manufacturers in the world, QNX has already won orders from 23. In the automotive operating system market, the QNX operating system occupies more than 50% of the market share, and in the vehicle-controlled autonomous driving operating system market, the QNX operating system occupies a market share of up to 90%.

In the in-car system, QNX is an absolute brother, and its dominance can be compared to the highlight moment of the BlackBerry at that time.

In the era of smart phones, safety is not a must for everyone, but it is absolutely for smart cars.

A smartphone system crashes, it's a big deal to restart, but if a smart car system that is driving at high speeds on the road or in an urban area collapses, the cost is unimaginable. In the era of smart phone systems, BlackBerry QNX, which is obsessed with security, is a success in the era of smart cars.

The same selling point, rise and fall, is it!

03

Because of the security to open the market, but also because of the security to give up the ecological richness of the era abandoned once blackberry, this time has become a little smarter.

ECU is the brain of automotive automation function, a car may be loaded with more than a hundred ECUs, while responsible for different modules, but in the traditional core structure of the system, a module problem may lead to the entire system of Caton. At a time when automotive autonomous driving technology is accelerating, the problems exposed by traditional models are becoming more and more serious.

QNX uses a microkernel design to isolate each component, and on the basis of ensuring the stable operation of the system, the components do not affect each other.

In this way, QNX has the characteristics of maintaining "openness" to the greatest extent, and if automakers want to add new functions after buying QNX systems, they do not need to overturn or overhaul the underlying logic, and directly add them to it.

BlackBerry QNX, which has lost to IOS and Android, began to set the strengths of each family, and even supported running Linux, Android and other systems on the basis of QNX's system, which can not only ensure security at the same time, but also allow the user experience more applications.

BlackBerry continues to improve its own application through data storage feedback.

Not only is it safe, but it is also constantly evolving on the basis of adapting to the development of the times, which is why more and more manufacturers choose QNX.

QNX has also emerged in China, where the competition for new energy vehicles is the most fierce - Baidu has built the Apollo autonomous driving platform based on QNX, and Xiaopeng's new car P7 is also equipped with QNX operating system modules.

Interestingly, Huawei, which is also determined to serve car companies, has the underlying logic of its Hongmeng system technology also based on a distributed architecture based on microkernels, similar to QNX.

Although there is no shortage of outstanding car and machine systems in China, only a few Chinese companies such as Huawei have gone deep into the bottom of the research and development strength.

"If one day it suddenly cuts off our food and doesn't let us use Android, are we stupid?" After Ren Zhengfei said this, Huawei quickly launched the Hongmeng system within a few years, and now the number of users has exceeded 220 million.

After experiencing the embarrassment of being countered by Google, Chinese companies are also more sensitive to this matter, and when the system war starts, the confrontation between Huawei and QNX, which has a similar underlying technical structure, will be fist-to-flesh.

In building cars, can Chinese companies avoid the embarrassment of Being countered by Google? Is this time we can only hope for Huawei?

Resources:

[1] Behind the Scenes of Automotive Do you know BlackBerry QNX? Sohu Auto

[2] BlackBerry QNX Builds Efficient Automotive Safety System, Gestapo Cars

[3] Why did BlackBerry, who failed miserably in the mobile phone market, become the king of the in-vehicle system market? "Core Wisdom News"