BlackBerry OS will give the torch to QNX further down the road

A RIM Vice President has confirmed in a business breakfast at BlackBerry DevCon that QNX will eventually take over the operating system needs of Research in Motion. It won't happen here and now, obviously, as BlackBerry OS 6 is just out. RIM is so mesmerized by the successful work on the PlayBook tablet OS, that it is planning BlackBerry OS 7 to be the transition towards a full-on shift to the QNX operating system for BlackBerry.

In a separate interview, Dan Dodge, the CEO of QNX software systems, explained how QNX Neutrino today is embedded in things from power stations, through car infotainment systems, to vision systems for the International Space Station. He mentions that its key differentiations are architecture and stability, bringing true multitasking with a very low memory footprint. Key for the gratifying work on the PlayBook tablet OS has been the similar culture of the two teams, and the fact that their products really complement each other.

Well, we'll see - Linux was great and simple in the beginning, but after everybody started developing commercial software and piling up compatibility requests, things slowed down. It will be interesting to follow how developers will work both for BlackBerry OS and QNX at the same time, despite that Dan Dodge claims Javascript applications, written for BlackBerry OS 6, will be able to play nice with the PlayBook.

source: BlackBerryDevBlog and IntoMobile