Qualcomm needs a friend, finds one in BlackBerry

With everything that has been happening to Qualcomm lately, the various lawsuits, Broadcom's merger attempt, and the potential loss of Apple's business, the chipmaker surely can use a friend. And based on a report released by Reuters today, it seems that it has found one in BlackBerry. Mind you, the latter had been something of an outcast until it worked out a licensing deal with multiple companies. Now, led by the BlackBerry KEYone and the BlackBerry Motion, BlackBerry is gaining some traction in the handset business.

This morning, Qualcomm and BlackBerry announced that they are teaming up to work together on the connected automobile market. BlackBerry's QNX software division already offers car manufacturers infortainment solutions, and is working on software for self-driving vehicles. The QNX Hypervisor 2.0 handles complex systems inside automobiles, and BlackBerry says that it will use the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 Automotive platform chipset to drive (no pun intended) its product.

BlackBerry says that it will use Qualcomm's chips on the aforementioned infotainment systems, virtual cockpit controllers and electronic control gateways. Last year, Qualcomm offered to buy automobile semiconductor supplier NXP for $38 billion. If that deal closes (the latest word is that the timeframe has been pushed back to 2018), Qualcomm will become the leading supplier of chips for the automotive industry. And that should bring the company a whole new group of friends.

source: Reuters