CES 2024: New deal will help BlackBerry into cars

I remember when a BlackBerry was the go-to tool for keeping in touch with my kids. Now, it looks like it’s going to be the way we keep in touch with our cars. No, it’s not making a new car-friendly phone, but making it easier to build the BlackBerry Ivy connected vehicle data platform into vehicles. It is demonstrating the technology at CES 2024 in Las Vegas this week, joining a wide range of automotive tech being launched at the event.

When the bottom fell out of BlackBerry’s smartphone market in the last decade, it reinvented itself as a software business, focused on security and mobile device management. It turned its QNX operating system into a vehicle operating system, and then worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to build BlackBerry Ivy. It is a cloud-connected automotive artificial intelligence platform, first demonstrated at CES 2023 last January. It doesn’t replace the likes of Apple Car Play or Android Auto, but works in tandem with them, and goes far beyond the basic infotainment they offer. Ivy is designed to generate insights from a vehicle’s data, from tyre pressure to onboard electronics, while Android or Apple only provides infotainment applications via a smartphone.

BlackBerry has now partnered with Intellias, a leading software engineering partner to automotive OEMs and mobility solution providers, to help integrate Ivy into its clients’ automotive reference designs, “enabling the rapid creation of exceptional in-vehicle experiences for consumers and enterprises alike”.

Vito Giallorenzo, senior vice president and general manager of BlackBerry Ivy, says: “Our partnership with Intellias will ensure that the auto industry can access BlackBerry Ivy through a world class system integrator. It will provide our mutual customers with software development scale and agility, allowing them to efficiently harness the power of in-vehicle data to create innovative mobility service and applications. This, in turn, introduces a raft of exciting new business opportunities for the automotive industry.”

Ivy is hardware agnostic, because it is based on industry standards. It offers software development kits (SDKs) and application programming interfaces (APIs) for simple integrations, while Intellias will be able to streamline software development and testing, allowing it to keep up with the evolving mobility landscape.

Intellias and BlackBerry provided the following information on how the partnership will work:

The first step of the collaboration is to integrate BlackBerry IVY into the new version of the Intellias Automotive Portable Kit (IntelliKit 2.0), a fully functional digital cockpit prototype that showcases the seamless integration of diverse hardware and software components using modern frameworks and tools. 

The latest IntelliKit 2.0 is based on Qualcomm SA8295P 4th generation Snapdragon Automotive Cockpit Platform with integration of Rightware’s Kanzi One HMI kit and BlackBerry IVY connected vehicle data platform.

Integration with the BlackBerry IVY platform and application of its abstraction levels enable Intellias to use a wide range of hardware and frameworks in IntelliKit 2.0.

All updates and improvements could be performed without rewriting core programs or any significant changes in the architecture thanks to IVY functionality, which enables simplified, flexible, and future-proof integration with a wide range of hardware and third-party tools.

* CES, formerly the Consumer Electronics Show, is one of the most influential tech events in the world, serving as the launchpad for several thousand new products every January in Las Vegas. It is owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), and features every aspect of the tech sector.